Jersey Girl, Part II - Mike Binder's Recreation Of Kevin Smith's Character And Mood In Man About Town

The Good: Decent acting, Good plot, Interesting characters, Excellent pace
The Bad: Not an original performance by Affleck, Most of the other actors not given enough room
The Basics: With a strong, if underused, cast and a good, if derivative, performance by Ben Affleck, Man About Town still surprises as a smart drama about introspection and extortion.


I'm a fan of the films of Kevin Smith and I have no real objection to Ben Affleck in some of the movies that actor has been in. My experiences with watching Affleck is that writer-director Kevin Smith is able to bring out the best in the actor who might not otherwise be anything remarkable as far as acting talent goes. Two of the best performances Affleck gives in his career are in Dogma (reviewed here!) and Smith's underrated Jersey Girl (reviewed here!). When I found Man About Town on the shelf, I was surprised I had never even heard of the movie and I picked it up.

Jack Giamoro is a talent agent who sits down in a journal-writing class to grow as an individual. At a place where he can no longer deny the realities of his life, he begins to write his confessions under the understated guidance of the class's professor, Dr. Primkin. Jack's life soon falls apart as the affair he suspects his wife is having is revealed, he is mugged by a wannabe client, and his journal is stolen by a vindictive would-be client at his agency. Jack's life spirals out of control as he falls into cycles of hate and potential violence and he is forced to depend on others to try to recover the journal and restore his life to what he wants it to be.

Man About Town is a pretty solid drama with moments that are amusing, though this is by no means a comedy. The reason I deny that this is a comedy is that the primary emphasis of the story and the storytelling is not funny, nor is it supposed to be. Jack's struggle is in some ways horrifying; what happens when your quest for personal growth ends up being exploited by those who would simply use your words for their own personal gain? This is the central question of this movie.

The execution of the concept is very well done. When Jack opens himself up to the questions that his marriage and life pose to him, he finds himself digging deeper and finding himself in very uncomfortable places - like admitting he cannot remember loving his wife. There are certainly realms more than could have been explored, but for a 96 minute movie, this packs in a lot of heavier concepts than are usually dealt with in such a movie.

The central character, Jack Giamoro, is empathetic and this is clearly his story. This is so much his story, in fact, that the other characters are only truly presented in ways that interact with his character. So, for example, it's hard to see what Jack is returning to when he contemplates his marriage to Nina. We have snippets of them happy together, we have flashbacks that show they were once happy, but we also see him very tired with the relationship and the trauma her affair brings to him. This is his story and all of the other characters are peripheral to him.

This leads to two real problems with Man About Town; one plot, one acting. The central plot problem is the pace and idiocy of the adversary here. Jack is locking wits with someone who has stolen his journal. Barbi Ling, this is not a surprise and comes out rather early in the film, so it's not a spoiler, is the one who orchestrates the mugging and theft of Jack's journal. Once Jack begins to attempt to get it back, Barbi's character becomes ridiculous and lacking in any sense. First, after the first attempt to recover the journal, she does not make a copy of the document. Second, she seems to be taking her sweet time in reading it - i.e. several days. These two things seem like common sense under the circumstances; make the artifact useless by replicating it and/or getting what you need from it.

More serious is that Man About Town is populated by a wonderful cast that is largely underused. John Cleese, who received third billing, is essentially a cameo role as Dr. Primkin. Jerry O'Connell, Kal Penn, Adam Goldberg, Howard Hessman, and Ling Bai serve only to interact with Ben Affleck's Jack, which gives them almost no screentime to develop their characters beyond the flat interpretations Jack might have of them. Especially sad is how Gina Gershon is neglected. Gershon plays Arlene, Jack's coworker at the agency. She has almost no screentime and her acting talents are wasted in a role that is never truly fleshed out.

Rebecca Romijn is surprisingly good as Nina Giamoro. I believe I've only seen Romijn in the X-Men films, so seeing her in a starkly dramatic role was wonderful. While the movie trades on her looks - her character begins as a model - she is forced to bring some dramatic heft to scenes where she is interacting with Affleck and essentially pleading for her character's marriage. And she is believable and interesting to watch.

The movie rests on Ben Affleck, though. Affleck gives a truly wonderful performance. The problem is, it's nothing new. Affleck is essentially playing the character he had in Jersey Girl (certainly the beginning of that movie) and as such there's nothing extraordinary about the heft with which he is portraying Jack. Affleck creates nothing unique or different about Jack to make him distinct and all through the film, I found myself feeling like I wanted more from Affleck, even while acknowledging he was doing a good (if derivative) job.

This is my first experience with a work by writer-director Mike Binder and I have to say I'm fairly impressed. The movie is well-presented and well directed. Despite the inherent problems with the acting and the plot, this is still better than most movies out there and I'm likely to check out more works by him.

Either way, this is a good use of your time and a movie that could open up some decent discussions.

For other works with Bai Ling, be sure to visit my reviews of:
Angel - Season 1
Star Wars: Revenge Of The Sith
Sky Captain And The World Of Tomorrow
Southland Tales
Lost - Season 3

7/10

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

© 2012, 2007 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Gays, Overweight, And White And Black People Will All Have Reason To Loathe Dance Flick.

The Good: One or two laughs
The Bad: Largely not funny, No real intelligence or insight on the genre, Lack of character development.
The Basics: If you have to see Dance Flick, wait for it on television or a free viewing, there are not enough laughs to justify paying for this movie.


When one discusses spoofs, the last few years the ". . . Movie" (Scary, Epic, Date, etc.) movies have dominated the genre. They have largely been random collections of dick and fart, fat, gay and interethnic jokes that are tossed together in a movie that includes innumerable visual references to recent films in pop culture. As a result, the creators of, for example, Disaster Movie, have not so much made any form of witty commentary on the conceits of disaster movies, so much as a movie that includes elements mocking recent disaster movies. Those same creative minds have also not been creating anything remotely cinematic or memorable - or even, largely, funny - with their latest endeavors. So, it is with some disappointment, then, that the creative Wayans clan has released something of the same caliber with Dance Flick.

Like the other ". . . Movie" movies, Dance Flick incorporates a few elements from movies involving street dancing, but then builds the film into something mostly lacking in cohesion, entirely lacking in wit, and unfortunately delivering surprisingly few laughs. Fans of Wayans productions like In Living Color will be incredibly disappointed as there is little in the film that satirizes dance movies so much as Dance Flick combines elements from a slew of recent dance movies and incorporates them into a bland collection of references that adds up to little worth watching. Sadly, those who want the best commentary on dance movies and their conceits would do better to simply watch "Peter's Daughter" on Family Guy, where the entire genre is broken down in a cutaway to "I'm rich and your poor, but let's dance together!" "Society's not gonna like that!" Sadly, this is all one truly needs to know and outside that element, Dance Flick is just a collection of jokes against fat people, homosexuals, and differences between white and black people.

A dance crew with A-Con and Thomas Uncles is participating in a riotous street dance battle when their surprise dance prodigy is knocked out of the competition and the pair loses the money they needed to pay back the gangster, Sugar Bear. As Tom and A-Con alternately plan to take out Sugar Bear and go on with their daily school lives, Megan White arrives at Musical High where she is adamant that she is not a dancer any more. Megan is now living in the ghetto with her father, following her mother's death, and at Musical High she meets and befriends Charity, a single mother. Charity is also Thomas's brother and after a debate in their drama class, Megan and Thomas begin to notice one another.

Megan and Tom begin to hang out, then, with Tom pushing Megan to dance again and simply get over the death of her mother. Hesitant, at first, Megan and Tom date, break up and dance as Sugar Bear comes after A-Con and Tom. As Sugar Bear's patience for getting his money runs out, a street dance competition is thrown that would allow Tom and A-Con to make things right . . . if only they had a crew.

First, the good. The last two minutes of the film are a parody of the movie Twilight (reviewed here!) which is actually funny and encapsulates much of the disappointment vampire movie buffs had with the film. This, though, has little to do with dance. Neither does the film's other laugh-out-loud joke, which involves Charity's "baby's daddy" coming to pick up their kid. The rest . . . meh. Of course, it was hard to get expectations up when the opening dance routines included things like Tom urinating on his opponents while dancing. Even the guy who got his head stuck up his own butt while dancing was worthy of a smile, but Tom's move was just gross and pointless.

Gross and/or pointless is how too much of the film actually is. The movie poster illustrates that the film includes visual parodies from Hairspray, Stomp The Yard, and Honey, but the problem is Dance Flick has about the depth of its own movie poster. Take, for example, the "parody" of Hairspray. There is a character who pops up looking like the girl from hairspray in body type, hair, and enthusiasm. She shows up and . . . that's about it. Dance Flick seems content to simply include the visual reference to the film Hairspray without actually making a comment on it. Similarly, Ray is parodied in a pretty harsh rant against blind people by Ray's mother and the blind boy appears for two scenes as an excuse to make jokes against blind people and reference Ray. Again, there is no real commentary on the movie, it is not so much a parody, just an entrance for jokes that have surprisingly little to do with dance movies.

In addition to blind people, overweight people don't get any respect in the movie. Sugar Bear is a thinly veiled mockery of overweight gangster types from Blacksploitation movies and the only clear reference is a visual allusion to Notorious. Otherwise, Sugar Bear acts as Dance Flick's intro to making fun of fat people. The only place this style of humor works is when the dance instructor mocks the female students - almost all of whom are stick-thin - about their weight, which might also be the film's only moment of genuine parody of the genre.

Gay people suffer less in Dance Flick from rampant homophobia as they do from stupid repetitive humor. There is a charming little dance number (set to the tune of Fame) where a young white boy comes out as gay. The song is innocuous enough, despite including virtually every stereotype about homosexuals. At least "gay" is not used as a pejorative and Dance Flick actually avoids any commentary on homosexuality, just the mockery of the stereotypes and the inclusion of bland, effeminate guys in dance movies. But where the film falls down are with the adult characters who make statements about homosexuality. The gay student's father is a closeted, overcompensating coach. The jokes he makes would be fine, were it not for a female coach who essentially makes the same jokes by having Megan and Nora wrestle while throwing money at them. Here, the humor is mortgaged by the fact that the jokes are repetitive.

This leads us to the interethnic humor. The Wayans humor here is based upon the idea that black and white people are different. People aren't just people in this film, they are black or white. Black women are portrayed as promiscuous, mouthy, disinterested, self-serving and generally stupid (Charity is a twenty-one year-old single mother who is still in high school). Black men are portrayed as violent, greedy, and sex-crazed. Megan and the white women are all naive, over-emotional and desperate for any validation. This type of humor dominates the movie more than any actual commentary on dance movies and it leaves us with remarkably little to write about; the humor is mostly a collection of stereotypes that mock the way different ethnicities are portrayed in these types of films.

Unfortunately, the way black men are portrayed as treating women illustrates a larger acceptance of misogyny than actually makes anything even remotely funny. Tom essentially beats up Megan in one scene (Tom is shown, Megan is not) and there are no consequences to it. Similarly, characters like Ms. Cameltoe (played by Amy Sedaris) make pretty sick jokes about women without actually staying on point (mocking dance movies). There is no real social benefit to the way this movie executes its jokes.

Thomas Uncles is played by Damon Wayans Jr. and my partner and I seemed to be the only people in the audience unsurprised (judging from the laughter) when the phrase "uncle tom" was finally trotted out. Damon Wayans Jr. is fine as Thomas, but he lacks any real fire or spark that his father portrayed in his sketch comedy. His portrayal is often bland and more subdued than electric. His blandness is only exceeded by that of Megan White's actress, Shoshana Bush. Bush has a great deal of luck; she went from being a character without a name in Fired Up! (reviewed here!) to being the lead in Dance Flick. Her character stands slackjawed through much of the movie and Bush does this fairly well. Still, there are moments when one catches the actress smirking.

Indeed, the only performances that left me with any hope for any members of the cast were the supporting roles of Charity and A-Con, played by Essence Atkins and Affion Crockett, respectively. Atkins has a wonderful sense of comic timing and she dives into the role of Charity with an energy that is captivating. Crockett's performance is essentially one extended impersonation of Ludacris' public persona, but he makes it work for him.

All in all, Dance Flick is a disappointment in that it makes less a mockery of the dance film genres as it does . . . well, people who are different from any other group. The Wayans who worked on the film call it well, that there is humor in mocking the differences between different people, but in the process, they mock too many of the people as opposed to mocking the mockery. In other words, they help reinforce some of the stereotypes as opposed to challenging them and the result is a film that does less to mock the dance film genre than it does offer this year's lackluster "parody." At least Amy Sedaris got more work.

For other dance movies, please visit my reviews of:
Dirty Dancing
Footloose (2011)
Step-Up 3-D

2.5/10

For other movie reviews, please 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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