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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

7/10

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

© 2016 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
| | |

Exactly As Droll As One Might Suspect: Maxim: The Hot 100 Disappoints

The Good: Decent photography, Good interviews
The Bad: Stupid concept, Addy, Lowbrow writing
The Basics: Maxim: The Hot 100 lives down to what one might expect of the annual magazine issue, though I was pleasantly surprised by the interviews!


One of the animated sitcoms - Family Guy, American Dad or The Simpsons has a line about Maxim that was utterly hilarious; something about their “Most Rape-able Celebrities” list. My wife recently gave me a gift subscription to Maxim, ostensibly for review and when Maxim: The Hot 100 (the annual special issue) arrived, I found myself trying to remember the joke from television about the publication. Maxim: The Hot 100 might not be quite the sinister issue that the joke insinuates, but it is pretty damn close.

Comprised of photos and a blurb for the 100 women that Maxim has decided (apparently through votes somehow) are the most desirable in the world, Maxim: The Hot 100 is like a catalog for shopping for unobtainable women. In addition to being a preposterous exercise (ranking women on their “hot” factor, as if there were a universal standard for the subjective emotion of desire), Maxim: The Hot 100 undermines itself far too frequently to be at all useful or even engaging. It’s not just some form of weird sour grapes that I write that; - favorites of mine like Anne Hathaway and Ellen Page did not make the list, but Bar Paly and Candice Swanepoel did(?!) – but any list where Katy Perry is ranked as more desirable than Sophia Vergara or Avril Lavigne ranks 44 and Anna Paquin is 78 seems skewed toward the absurd.

In addition to having a purpose that is ridiculous – are Maxim readers so stupid that they need to be told whom to be attracted to?! – and somewhat inscrutable (what are the readers supposed to do, exactly, with this information?), the Maxim: The Hot 100 special issue seems remarkably lowbrow in terms of the writing. Take, for example, the listing for Gal Gadot (who made #84 on the list) on page 13 of this year’s Maxim: The Hot 100. The blurb for Gadot reads, “Hollywood’s newest Wonder Woman is a total badass. She not only owns a motorcycle but also served two years in the Israeli army” (13). Gal Gadot is Israeli. You know who else served two years in the Israeli army? Every other Israeli citizen; it’s mandatory. Does that make her more of a badass than #39, Gina Carano, who was a MMA-brawler? Probably not. My point is that virtually none of the blurbs say anything useful, interesting or insightful about their subjects.

What keeps Maxim: The Hot 100 from the most dismal of ratings, then? First off, the photography. Most of the photos are incredibly good, exactly what one might hope for from a celebrity spankbook with a ridiculously low cover price of $3.99. The price of the magazine might make one think that it was not going to be a glossy, good-looking magazine, but apparently advertiser dollars subsidize the magazine enough that the special issue needs not charge an arm and a leg. Maxim: The Hot 100 features photographically solid pictures; in terms of color, contrast, and composition, the photographers utilized in Maxim: The Hot 100 clearly know what they are doing. In fact, because the photographers seem able and their subjects are undeniably photogenic, it is astonishing that they get some of the celebrities in remarkably unflattering looks (there’s something horrid about calling someone “hot” and smacking up a picture of them looking haggard, as at least one of the women was).

The other aspect that sells the magazine – the one that pleasantly surprised me – is the interviews. Maxim: The Hot 100 features interviews with cool celebrities (this year, it was Bryan Cranston and Nick Offerman). The questions asked of these celebrities are not the typical ones that have been asked to death and the answers are fun and informative.

Unfortunately, the two articles and a smattering of the hundreds of pictures throughout the magazine are hardly enough to justify the magazine’s existence. Several pages of the magazine are wasted debunking movie plot/effect issues (like would reversing the Earth’s direction a la Superman: The Movie turn back time). Does Maxim believe a large population of its readers are physicists who somehow slept through basic temporal mechanics? Or biology students who do not know the average size of a great white shark? Other preposterous articles focus on the latest supermodel, hot trends, and a short story about joining the mile-high club. The average length of an article in Maxim: The Hot 100 is one page, which suggests that the average reader’s attention span is ridiculously limited.

Not overflowing with impressive diction or vocabulary, Maxim: The Hot 100 is fairly ad-filled. The 120-page magazine features 22 pages of full ads (not counting the inside and back covers), along with 3 pages of partial ads and 8 pages of style articles which list all of the items in the photos, with a price (which is pretty much an advertisement to me!).

Maybe I’m not the target demographic, maybe I’m not desperately looking for unobtainable women or maybe I just don’t need a magazine to tell me what to like to have opinions. But, for those who don’t care about smart (the most common comment by women on the Maxim Hot 100 list is about their own butt; none of the quotes capture the intelligence of any of the smart women on the list), aren’t looking for a woman even close to 40 (Jennifer Lopez seems to be the most senior member of the list) and who want something more respectably portable than a hard-core magazine, Maxim: The Hot 100 is enough to entertain those who want to spend the four bucks on it.

For other magazine reviews, please visit my evaluations of:
AAA Living
Ladies’ Home Journal
Buffy The Vampire Slayer Magazine

2.5/10

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

© 2014 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
| | |

An Amazing Cast And Well-Executed Concept Make The Ten Worth Watching!

The Good: Interesting concept, well executed, Decent performances, Very funny.
The Bad: No real character development, Somewhat limited concept, Does not replay as well.
The Basics: A cleverly-executed comedy, The Ten explores a series of situations that remind viewers (ironically) of the importance of the Ten Commandments.


Given how limited many horror movies can be, it is unsurprising that the antithesis – comedies – can be similarly basic in their concept. If Seven was a horror film focused on a killer who is motivated by the seven deadly sins, it is equally ambitious or simple to have a comedy like The Ten. The Ten has the very simple concept of creating vignettes on the Ten Commandments that overlap in minimal ways. Several of the characters recur from sequence to sequence, with “character development” taking the form of them experiencing more variations of violations of the Ten Commandments.

In other words, The Ten has far less in the way of memorable characters and much more in the way of memorable gags or plot twists that disturb while they amuse. More than the characters, much of the joy for viewers comes from how the actors are utilized and how they pop back into the narrative in initially clever ways. After watching the film twice, I can honestly say there are none of the characters I particularly care about, but I enjoyed the movie and enjoyed how the actors were utilized to serve the fairly clever plot concept.

After a beleaguered narrator (who is on the fast track to have an affair himself) explains the concept of the film, the story begins with Stephen Montgomery. Stephen accidentally jumps out of a plane and miraculously survives the fall. However, Stephen is embedded in the ground where he becomes an overnight star. Even though his fiancé Kelly sticks by him, the superstardom that he achieves for the television show based around him goes to his head. Others begin treating him like a god and he arrogantly lets it go to his head, until he loses everything. This is followed by the story of Gloria, who goes to Mexico, meets Jesus there and has a torrid affair with him. When she returns home and has sex with her boyfriend, she calls out “Jesus!” and ruins their relationship, illustrating the importance of not taking the lord’s name in vain. Dr. Glenn Richie (who essentially had a cameo in the first vignette) pops back up in the “Thou Shall Not Murder” sequence where he kills a woman by leaving medical scissors in her body after surgery. While he did the medical malpractice “as a goof,” he is quickly prosecuted, found guilty and goes to prison where he is pretty constantly ass-raped.

After a woman who has two black children who denies (for decades) that they have a father other than the white man who raised them comes clean about her affair with Arnold Schwarzenegger, her children realize that the actor she hired to impersonate Schwarzenegger is more a father than they ever had before, illustrating that it is important to honor one’s father and mother. A convoluted series of events leads to the death of a whole fieldtrip worth of children when they cannot get CAT scans they need when competing neighbors buy truckloads of scanners and go out together to bury the hatchet. In prison, Duane Rosenblum covets Dr. Richie leading to a very dark exchange that results in Richie being horribly violated by Rosenblum (instead of his regular prison rapist!). The story of the drug-dealing Lying Rhino becomes the less for not bearing false witness and men getting together for naked Sundays is the premise for honoring the Sabbath and keeping it holy.

The Tenreally goes out of its way to create convoluted situations to make its points. The prison ass rape concept for not coveting your neighbor’s wife is so over-the-top that it avoids the minor discomfort of rape jokes and leaps into the area of taste that actually addresses what bad taste simple rape jokes have. It’s risqué, but the film makes it work. In explaining “Thou Shall Not Steal,” The Ten reaches its highest level of meta-conscious humor: it is Winona Ryder’s Kelly who steals a ventriloquist dummy to have an affair with who illustrates that commandment! In other words, The Ten is not for the comically faint of heart. The humor is ballsy and pushes the envelope, but the movie makes its point well.

And The Ten has a pretty amazing cast, especially for a movie I had never heard of. Led by Paul Rudd, The Ten features established talents like Oliver Platt, Ron Silver, Winona Ryder, Famke Janssen, Jason Sudeikis, Live Schreiber, Justin Theroux, and Jessica Alba. Some have little more than a brief cameo, like Janeane Garofalo (who is in a single sequence for a single scene). Newer talents like Rob Corddry, Rashida Jones, Joe Lo Truglio, Gretchen Mol, and Adam Brody all have good outings in their respective segments.

But more than a cohesive movie, The Ten is a concept film and the concept is quickly established and then beaten to death. It is not unpleasant – though the film has somewhat low replayability – and the star power overshadows the characters many of the performers play , but The Ten is well worth watching for anyone who wants a comedy that is beyond the ordinary.

For other works with Jo Lo Truglio, please visit my reviews of:
Wreck-It Ralph
Pitch Perfect
Wanderlust
Paul
I Love You, Man
Pineapple Express

6.5/10

Check out how this movie stacks up against other movies I have reviewed by visiting my Movie Review Index Page for a listing of those reviews from best to worst!

© 2013 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
| | |

Oh Judd Apatow, You (Sort Of) Make Me Laugh! Knocked Up.

The Good: Moments of humor, Interesting enough characters, Good casting
The Bad: Nothing extraordinary on the DVD bonus features, Very predictable
The Basics: In a just-funny-enough-to-recommend movie, Judd Apatow uses Seth Rogen and Katherine Heigl to tell the story of a stoner and a successful woman who have sex, then work to fall in love.


Culturally, it does seem like the United States is at a place where pop-culture is rather preoccupied with the whole concept of movies that start with sex and let the love come later. This was a pretty weak concept in Juno (reviewed here!), but it makes for a very simple and direct premise for Knocked Up. Knocked Up is another young stoner comedy film from writer and director Judd Apatow. I became familiar with Apatow's work when he was half of the creative genius behind the one-season-wonder Freaks & Geeks (reviewed here!). Since then, Apatow had been a writer and director who seems to have gone for some of the most obvious comedies and there has been a slight sense of disappointment from those of us who began our appreciation of his works with what appears to have been the high point in his career.

Knocked Up does not change that; while far funnier than many of Apatow's other cinematic attempts, it is still far too obvious and less well-developed than it could be. This makes for good, casual viewing for a night when one needs a laugh from something they do not have to think too much about, but it's a tough sell to argue in favor of buying the DVD. This movie has pretty limited appeal outside the target demographic of young college students who might well get drunk at a club, have fairly anonymous sex and end up pregnant. One hopes that is an ever-shrinking demographic, but I'm not holding my breath.

Ben Stone is a slacker who is living with his four friends and living off money from a lawsuit, money which is rapidly drying up. Ben and his housemates spend much of their time getting stoned and watching movies to find what celebrities get naked and at what point in a movie they are shown naked to make a website with that information. One night, after being promoted at work to on-air talent at E!, Alison Scott goes out to a club with her sister, Debbie. After a few too many drinks, Alison takes Ben back to her home - the pool house at Debbie's - and the two have sex.

Eight weeks later, Alison realizes that she is pregnant and decides to keep the baby. She informs Ben of the pregnancy and - despite his limited means and his initial freaked out reaction - Ben decides he wants to be there for Alison and his child. As a result, Ben and Alison begin dating in earnest to try to prepare for parenthood and in the process, they try to fall in love.

Knocked Up is a remarkably formulaic romantic comedy. Two people who have no real connection and few shared values begin to see the value in one another's lifestyles. There are the usual predictable events including attraction, repulsion, acceptance, misunderstanding and then resolution. This could pretty much be one of the defining films for following a formula for romantic comedy. Like many romantic comedies, Ben and Alison's relationship is set opposite a more obvious and loving relationship, that of Pete and Debbie. Pete and Debbie have their own fallings out which contrasts with Ben and Alison's and allows Ben to make a more normal and likable companion than his four stoner buddies.

The friendship between Ben and Pete allows Apatow to actually say something useful with Knocked Up, though, even if it is only one line in the entire movie. Pete's issue with Debbie has him sneaking around with his friends at odd times just to have some "me time," which is - of course - uncovered in the course of the movie. In trying to resolve this pseudo conflict, Pete realizes that the biggest problem in his marriage is that he has a wife who wants to spend more time with him. This is a concept too infrequently realized in any type film and it is refreshing to see it be realized in Knocked Up.

This also contrasts with the relationships of Ben's friends. Rarely has a more pathetic collection of miscreants been collected on film and while the sheer pointlessness of their attempted business venture eventually becomes revealed, far too much of their screentime is dumb jokes performed by post-teens who ought to know better. The peak of this is the character of Jodi who enters the household as Ben departs. She speaks in a giggly incomprehensible dialect that utterly wastes the viewer's time. Bad enough to be subjected to several minutes of stoners being idiots; even worse to have to watch the idiotic attempt to portray one of their wasted girlfriends.

Knocked Up manages to work - when it does - because even though it follows a remarkably predictable formula for romantic comedies, the concept is presented in a way that makes it feel just new enough to be amusing. Watching Ben and Alison learn about one another and discover the simple charms each possesses almost makes up for the fact that the viewer can see what is coming about a mile off.

Fans of Freaks & Geeks will enjoy seeing Knocked Up in that it stars Judd Apatow regular Seth Rogen, as well as Freaks & Geeks alums Jason Segel, Martin Starr (who looks nothing like he did in his television role) and a cameo by James Franco. Fans of Grey's Anatomy will no doubt enjoy seeing Katherine Heigl in a role outside her star-making role on that. Knocked Up works in part because when they sit opposite one another, Rogen and Heigl are able to portray a realistic amount of romantic chemistry.

Rogen has an unassuming quality to him and a look that is anything but Hollywood typical. As a result, Apatow frequently uses him in roles where he appears as a slouching slacker. In Knocked Up, Rogen is allowed just enough moments where his character assumes the mantle of respectability and comes into his own in a way that implies he might have the chops for serious drama. Despite things like the on-air prank that makes up the "topless" scene on the unrated DVD, Rogen has moments where he plays Ben quiet and contemplative in a way that genuinely works for him.

It is not a real surprise, for most viewers, that Katherine Heigl holds her own with Rogen. She has all of the qualities for a classic Hollywood star from the figure to her delivery of serious lines. She plays the straightman throughout the movie, while Rogen plays wacky. Heigl is a good choice, though (Anne Hathaway turned down the role) and she lends a seriousness that helps to exaggerate Rogen's absurdities. At the right moments, though, Heigl illustrates she has her own decent sense of comic timing, playing out a few physical gags in the movie.

Largely, though, Knocked Up is an unsurprising romantic comedy that unfolds in exactly the way a seasoned cinephile might expect it to. On DVD, there are a bevy of deleted scenes, a commentary track and a few alternate scenes, including a gag topless scene (It's not Heigl). The film looks good on DVD, but it's one I recommend solely for the rental as opposed to the buy. At least it is not unfunny and it's a fair way to kill an afternoon.

For other works with Seth Rogen, check out my reviews of:
50/50
Paul
The Green Hornet
Monsters Vs. Aliens
Observe And Report
Zack And Miri Make A Porno
Pineapple Express
Step Brothers
The 40 Year Old Virgin
Anchorman: The Legend Of Ron Burgundy
Donnie Darko

6/10

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

© 2012, 2008 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
| | |

How I Know I Am More Professional Than Joel Siegel:The Love Guru As Bad As You've Heard!

The Good: None, seriously, utterly unredeemable.
The Bad: Not funny, Terrible acting, Lack of character, Predictable plot, Just plain stupid!
The Basics: Mike Myers writes and "acts" in another disappointing comedy so juvenile as to astonish anyone with taste that it was made.


Every now and then, it behooves reviewers to remember the principles of our trade. There are several rules for being a professional reviewer and being treated as one, one of which is that we subject ourselves to the full experience of a film. I remember this point being driven home quite strongly when Clerks II (reviewed here!) was released. In a much-publicized event, film reviewer Joel Siegel walked out of the viewing, loudly muttering about the movie. Kevin Smith shot back on his website and most reviewers - even those who did not like Clerks II sided with Smith: a professional does not walk out of a film. I've often loathed reviewers who play the safe reviews, avoiding the little films, the teen-oriented horror flicks and the dumbest of inane comedies just to always have something positive to write. Growing up where I did, I quickly became disenchanted with the local movie reviewers, who played the odds that way, leaving a significant number of movies unreviewed.

So, I've returned from seeing the latest Mike Myers "comedy" flick, The Love Guru, and I am proud of myself for not walking out of the theater. It is such a bad film that I was tempted and that takes a lot, even for me. Yes, it is such a bad flick that I am updating my "Worst 10 Movies Of All Time.” But I sat through it.

Pitka is a guru who has lived in the shadow of Deepak Chopra and the Indian gurus he trained under as a child. Desiring nothing more than to appear on Oprah, Pitka arrives in the United States (he left as a child) to try to establish himself. When a hockey player's wife runs off with an opposing team's goalie, Pitka is asked to intervene. Trying to reconcile Prudence Roanoke with her Maple Leaf's husband, Darren, proves to be a bit of a task. Pitka tries not to disappoint Jane, the owner of the Maple Leaf's, but finds that convincing Prudence to leave Jacques Grande is easier said than done.

It quickly degenerates into a lot of one-liners that illustrate that Pitka's help is anything but and he speaks alternatively in cliches and graphic and explicit sexual remarks that drone on and on.

For a comedy, this movie falls terribly flat, so flat, in fact that it is worthwhile to note that I laughed a grand total of zero times while watching this movie. 88 minutes, zero laughs, that's not a good ratio for a comedy. Moreover, much of the movie resulted in me actually wincing. My physical reaction to the jokes was to wince and wonder why Mike Myers and Graham Gordy would admit to having written this.

The average joke - as written - involves simply infusing a sentence with the word "penis," equating love to sex and the implications that Pitka is completely at ease with everyone and everything. He displays no real wisdom in his role as a guru and The Love Guru falls flat because rather than satirize self-help "gurus," some of whom appear in the film, it simply has Mike Myers playing his parody of one. The thing is, established real-life self-help personalities like Deepak Chopra who appears prominently and recognizably in The Love Guru lowers himself by appearing beside Myers as Pitka.

There is no real character in The Love Guru; Pitka is a schtick, a one-trick pony that is familiar and is quickly played out. The broken couple is a cliche and there is no genuine sense of personality to either character. Indeed, far more than character or even personality or humor, what The Love Guru has is names. The jokes in The Love Guru are in the names of the characters. And as we all know, jokes get weakened with repetition. The names, then, start as jokes that might be amusing, but quickly get beaten into the ground because they are repeated.

As a result, the fundamental jokes of The Love Guru are: Punch Cherkov (the coach, played by perennial Myers sidekick Verne Troyer), Dick Pants, Tugginmypudha, and Satchabigknoba. If you've read those names and seen the trailer, you've gotten the full, rich experience that is The Love Guru. It is not a funny, witty or even remotely interesting movie and it is hard to overstate that.

Moreover, this film should well be the death of the few respectable actors who appear in it. Now, the thing is, viewers pretty much know what to expect from Mike Myers. Myers has some very specific affects and recurring jokes that he does in pretty much every feature he is in. The Love Guru is no exception. Myers bugs his eyes out frequently to emote. In fact, the effect which puts Myers's adult head on a very small body in the flashback sequences is pretty much defined by Myers opening his eyes super wide. He raises his eyebrow. He does that frequently for emphasis in The Love Guru; it does not make him appear any more wise. He repeats lines back to characters he is speaking to. He looks like he is about to laugh, especially when he repeats characters names that are clearly jokes. It's that kind of dumb movie and Myers plays all of the jokes and styles of jokes that made him popular was Wayne in Wayne's World and Austin Powers in those movies. We know Mike Myers and in The Love Guru, he is no less the Myers that we already know.

But Jim Gaffigan is a respectable comedian. Stephen Colbert is a great satirist (his deadpan is the definition of satirical!). They both appear in The Love Guru and one has to wonder why they participated in this drecht. But the coup for Myers and director Marco Schnabel is that Ben Kingsley appears in this movie. Yes, Ben Kingsley, who was amazing in Gandhi (reviewed here!), who helped make The House Of Sand And Fog (reviewed here!) so heartwrenching, is the butt of jokes as one of Pitka's fellow Gurus. And we just have to ask "WHY?!"

Kingsley's mere presence does not add anything to The Love Guru, neither does the presence of Jessica Alba or Justin Timberlake whose characters utilize and suffer Pitka's services, respectively. It's hard to figure out whose career might be hurt most by participating in this movie, but my money is on Kingsley; there are people who don't care what Deepak Chopra has to say, Alba's appeared in lemons before, no one has been banking on Timberlake ever getting a Best Actor nomination for anything (outside, possibly, an MTV Movie Award), and Mike Myers gives the same one-trick pony that he's been milking since his Saturday Night Live days. Kingsley is a respected actor and in this he is droll and poorly utilized.

On DVD, The Love Guru has a ton of deleted and extended scenes, none of which are funnier than the original feature. As well, there are three behind-the-scenes featurettes and a blooper reel. Still, it's not worth owning or even renting.

It is films like The Love Guru which force the viewer to acknowledge that some movies are just that bad. Again, zero laughs. None. Not one. But I didn't walk out. And tonight, it is worth noting that reviewers like me sit through movies like this so you don't have to. Eight bucks for a movie is too much to spend to walk out of a movie and those not bound by the ethical considerations of a reviewer would surely want nothing more than to do just that.

For other films featuring Mike Meyers, please check out my reviews of:
Shrek Forever After
Shrek

0/10

Check out all the films that rated higher than this, by visiting my Movie Review Index Page where the reviews are organized from Best Film to Worst!

© 2012, 2008 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.

| | |

Good Luck Chuck: Generally Bad Sex Farce With A Lot Of Nudity (Yea!).

The Good: Well, there IS a lot of sex in the movie.
The Bad: Not funny, Utterly predictable, Obvious
The Basics: It's a poor day for Jessica Alba, yet again, with Good Luck Chuck, a dumb sex farce without any real heart.


Every time I take note of a comedy about sex, a Beavis & Butthead laugh and voice goes through my head with a mental "Heh, heh. . . sex." I suppose having sexual ethics is boring and passe, but it does make movies based entirely on sexual folly rather dull and pointless. And to nip in the bud: I am not one of those people who thinks there ought to be less sex in movies or on television. In fact, I'm all for more. I just like it to have a reasonable context and to actually be interesting.

This whole idea was driven home to me a few days ago when I was writing an erotic scene for the last book I wrote. It has been years since I wrote such a scene and after all of this time, I was concerned with the writing appearing too technical or mechanical. So, I consulted a friend of mine and had a frank discussion about erotica. His verdict was one that made sense to me: the measure of success for erotic writing is whether or not it effectively satisfies the target audience. Does it titillate in the way it is intended the people it is intended to titillate? I mention this before diving head first into a review of Good Luck Chuck because while there is a lot of sex in the movie, it is not an erotic or even vaguely interesting movie.

Cursed by a Goth chick as a kid while playing spin-the-bottle at a birthday party, Charlie is rumored to be a sexual good-luck charm. He is cursed to be without love for his life, though he will inspire love in those around him. As a result, anyone who has sex with Chuck will meet and fall in love with the man (or woman) of their dreams after the encounter. After yet another marriage of an ex-, Chuck and his best friend Stu buy into the mythos. Stu convinces Chuck to allow himself to be promiscuous and enjoy the noncommittal sex from women throwing themselves at Chuck in order to meet their Mr. Right afterwards.

Soon after he allows himself to go wild, though, Chuck meets Cam, a beautiful biologist who is completely in love with penguins. Initially cold to Chuck, Cam warms up to him right around the time that Chuck realizes he does not want her to move on from him after they consummate their relationship. He tries desperately to break the curse and keep Cam interested, going over-the-top in his attempts to achieve both goals.

I have, largely, made a point of avoiding the sex farce movies. Because of an appreciation of Judd Apatow's early works, I ended up seeing The 40 Year Old Virgin (reviewed here!) and was not impressed. Similarly, it was only because I had free tickets that I went to Sex Drive (reviewed here!) and found myself pleasantly surprised by that. But in generally, I have avoided the formulaic "lose your virginity" movies since well before American Pie hit theaters. It just hasn't so much interested me, probably because that part of my life is so far behind me and because it always seems to juvenile and stupid to waste that first time for just anything or any one. So, I went into Good Luck Chuck with remarkably low expectations.

Good Luck Chuck lived down to my expectations. It is worth noting that while Good Luck Chuck is a pretty lousy movie, it could have been much worse and this did not fall below my best estimate of what the movie could be. It's a dumb premise, executed as well as can be expected given how much of the premise determines the course of the movie. And this is a ridiculously predictable movie.

Charlie is hardly an empathetic character and his sidekick Stu is, of course, even worse. Chuck's main downfall is that he lets Stu convince him to stop caring either about the desperate women he has sex with in order to "help" find their true love or himself for treating himself so cheaply. So when he finally does fall for Cam, after a long line of Hollywood-beautiful women, the viewer's thought is more or less "why her?!" If only Chuck had been so interested in character before her odds are he would have been just as happy with virtually any other woman he, uh, banged.

So, Good Luck Chuck is a dumb romantic comedy broken up by Chuck having a lot of sex with women who treat him pretty poorly. Those who read my other reviews know I'm a sucker for pointing out subtext. Good Luck Chuck paints itself as a movie where the protagonist has a woeful ability and he is used by women who are desperate for love. On the surface, it may seem like Chuck is a nice guy doing a nice thing for otherwise nice women. But then, Chuck starts having sex with women who read books, smack him around and yell at him while involved in acts of coitus. The surface suggests that this is a misandric movie where women are finally getting their due on their male oppressors and sexual liberation is alive and well. But it's not. This is another movie where women are treated as objects (especially the rotund woman used to "prove" to Chuck that the curse is not real) and their treatment of a guy who is ostensibly doing a favor they ask for illustrates a ridiculously low opinion of women. In other words, if Chuck were truly doing something nice for all of the demure, loveless women in the world by fucking their brains out, one thinks they'd be grateful. No, Good Luck Chuck paints Chuck as a strange victim of the usual harpy cliche of women. At least movies like The Story Of O (reviewed here!) are pretty straightforward in their view of women and even make a pass at making the sexual domination of them an act of feminine empowerment. Good Luck Chuck is not even smart enough to put up the pretense.

It's when reviewing the movie that I realize how little I truly enjoyed it. This is not to say I didn't laugh at all, because there were moments I did, especially early on. But from the moment Chuck's personal assistant throws herself at Chuck in an attempt to land a man and the movie becomes largely about making fun of fat women, lesbians, and getting Jessica Alba in her underwear (yes, kids, there is some sideboob), Good Luck Chuck fails to be either funny or even entertaining.

Jessica Alba, who sells a ton of magazines, is at this point forcing us to ask the question "what do you want out of your career?!" Between this and The Love Guru, Alba seems to be determined not to put herself in any roles where she can play a character who is substantive or even interesting. Instead, one suspects that Alba was offered a dump truck of cash to get this movie made and released and she just . . . I don't know, got hit with an IRS audit or something, so she said "sure."

I have no standard by which to judge the acting of Dane Cook in this. Cook plays Chuck and he seems to be banking a lot on his smile and the movie's nudity to cover the fact that his character is lacking in character and the movie is utterly predictable.

On DVD, there are deleted scenes which add nothing substantive to the movie. This is largely because it is not a substantive movie to begin with, so there's nothing that changes with the deleted scenes. The worthwhile bonus feature (hey kids, this is what you're truly looking for!) is a feature that is a simple montage of all of the movie's sex scenes and all of the nudity in the movie. Yes, you can skip the film, watch the sex and save yourself a lot of time.

For other works with Crystal Lowe, visit my reviews of:
Hot Tub Time Machine
Fantastic Four: Rise Of The Silver Surfer
Scary Movie 4

2.5/10

For other film reviews, be sure to check out my Movie Review Index Page!

© 2012, 2008 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.

| | |

Depressed People Theatre Returns With Meet Bill, Aaron Eckhart's Magnum Opus To Mid-life Crisis’s

The Good: Good acting, Interesting characters
The Bad: Oppressive mood, Light on plot, Surprisingly light on DVD bonus features
The Basics: Difficult to watch and hard to care about the protagonist, Meet Bill
presents a middle aged man whose wife cheats on him and thus inspires him to change his life.


Do you know how when you learn a new word, all of a sudden you tend to hear it everywhere? I am convinced that a similar thing happens with actors and actresses; once you become aware of an actor, they suddenly pop up everywhere. In my little film appreciation series for Aaron Eckhart, I have noticed Elizabeth Banks, specifically when she appeared in Meet Bill. And then there she was on my television in previews for the new Kevin Smith movie, Zack And Miri Make A Porno (reviewed here!) and checking out the IMDB, it turns out she has been in several movies I have seen. It's enough to make me wonder what I was paying attention to in The 40 Year Old Virgin if not her!

Well, Elizabeth Banks shines in Meet Bill and her performance in this is making me look forward to Smith's new movie even more than I already had been. And Aaron Eckhart continues a generally winning tradition of proving to me he has some serious acting ability, forsaking his trademark smile and any light in his eyes for one of his most bleak, difficult-to-watch performances yet. Meet Bill, alternately titled simply Bill, is a movie that is somewhat tough to define, but I suspect the closest I will get is that this is combination of American Beauty (reviewed here!) and Charlie Bartlett.

Bill is a man who pretty much loathes working for his father-in-law at the bank and after a groundbreaking ceremony for a new facility the bank is sponsoring, he discovers his wife is having an affair with the local news anchor, Chip. This comes more or less at the same time that Bill is dragooned by his father-in-law and brother into mentoring a drug dealing high school student. After covering for the kid when the principal pursues him into the bathroom, Bill and the teen he is tagged with mentoring begin to bond.

Determined to win his independence from his father-in-law, Bill quits his anxiety eating, begins swimming to lose weight, tries to dye his hair (mimicking the guy his wife is having an affair with) and investigates opening his own Sweet Sweet doughnut franchise. As he continues to feel pressure to live up, he takes a cue from the irresponsibility of the kid he is supposed to be a role model for and he kicks back, uses a lingerie saleswoman, Lucy, to pose as his wife for the Sweet Sweet franchisers and turns the course of his life in a different direction.

Part of the reason American Beauty worked as well as it did was that Lester Burham is treated as a loser, but from the outset, it seems like he has essentially been screwed over. He has a wife and child who do not love him, but he works hard for and random, unfortunate things happen to him (like his briefcase falling open and scattering his papers when he is in a hurry for work). Bill, unfortunately, has no such empathetic qualities. He's just flat out pathetic.

Bill opens the movie with whining about being married to Jess and having to put up with her father. The problem here is that, one assumes, no one put a gun to his head and forced Bill to marry a Hollywood beautiful woman whose father was absolutely loaded. Bill never in the course of Meet Bill shows any inkling toward anything that he might be good at outside the bank. The Sweet Sweet franchise is one that he becomes interested in because he loves sugary snacks and because he hopes it will buy him the financial freedom to be rid of his father-in-law, but it never is illustrated that he might have an actual aptitude for it (and indeed, the resolution to the movie suggests he is just aimless, if not talentless).

Similarly, there is nothing that illustrates or explains what Jess saw in Bill originally. In the course of Bill's exercise regimen to lose his gut, Bill slims down and gets fit in a way that seems quite new to him. One suspects that from the lack of hair management and the persistent frown on Bill's face that he has never been much of a catch in a physical sense and that when Jess met and married him, he was not exactly a model for the Atlas folks. So, why Jess initially hooked up with Bill, who seems to have no dreams or ambitions that aren't reactive to the situation he finds his marriage in, is a complete mystery to the viewer. But the better question is why has Jess stayed with him this long if she was so unhappy with him?

Jess is a character who makes little sense in this regard and her fury over being caught on tape by Bill having sex with Chip reads as false. I'm not saying her indignation does not make sense, because it does. But here's a woman who has been lying to her husband and is caught having an affair and she acts like only her anger about being caught ought to matter.

The other half of the story is the mentoring bit with Bill and the Kid. Bill is, naturally, a pathetic mentor and the dynamic quickly becomes the Kid corrupting Bill. It is, for example, the youth's idea to try to have Bill win Jess back by getting her jealous through Lucy. The Kid also leads Bill into a situation where they get high and Bill has sex with one of Lucy's friends. In general, I am not so keen on films where the kids are smarter or more emotionally connected than adults, but there was something watchable about this scenario in Meet Bill. This probably comes down to the kicker lines as far as the Kid is concerned, when he observes to Bill that he will not be the same guy in ten years, so he is simply enjoying who he is now. That maturity to realize and accept that people constantly grow and change might not read quite right coming from that character, but it is a worthwhile message regardless and deserves to be expressed, lending some value to Meet Bill.

I tend to be one who argues for realism in film and Meet Bill seems to almost be a counterargument to that. I like movies where people struggle and there is a realism to that. The problem with viewing Meet Bill as that sort of film is that it still struggles with the basic reality of everyday problems. In other words, it is one thing to watch a common person suffer and struggle and either overcome or be destroyed by the circumstances they find themselves in. It is entirely a different thing to watch a guy who has a huge house, knockout wife, great job, and access to do pretty much what he wants complain and eventually change his life when the people around him get sick of him. Within five minutes of starting Meet Bill, I was sick of Bill, too!

One of the nice things about Meet Bill is that it does have a generally positive view of gay relationships. Writer and co-director Melissa Wallack provides a rescue for Bill in the form of his homosexual brother and his partner, Paul. Craig Bierko and Reed Diamond play the couple with minimal camp and a generally decent embodiment of a normal, loving relationship (which, despite the presentation in many films, it more like reality than what we see in the movies). I use "generally decent" because some of the usual anti-gay pejoratives are tossed out and it would have been nice if Wallack could have gotten through the film without making an issue of the
relationship.

What makes Meet Bill watchable is the acting. Craig Bierko and Reed Diamond give solid supporting performances that make clear differentiations from the characters they played on Boston Legal and Homicide: Life On The Street, respectively. Logan Lerman illustrates a lot of potential as the Kid and one suspects that when directors stop using him for his youthful smirk, he will actually be able to carry scenes with real gravity. As mentioned before Elizabeth Banks is vital and engaging as Jess, even if her character is a somewhat annoying cheat.

But it is Aaron Eckhart that ultimately pulls Meet Bill up out of obscurity. Eckhart tends to have active, verbose roles and in this film he is constantly somber and dead-eyed. He is completely convincing in the part, as well, making the viewer believe completely in his pathetic reality, even if it is hard to empathize with his character.

On DVD, Meet Bill is presented with minimal DVD extras. After a bevy of previews for other films, there is only a collection of about ten deleted scenes, some of which are actually noteworthy enough to be missed from the actual film. But for the most part, the DVD is as barren as the protagonist's trademark expression.

For other works with Kristen Wiig, be sure to visit my reviews of:
Bridesmaids
Paul
Despicable Me
Date Night
How To Train Your Dragon
Whip It
Forgetting Sarah Marshall

6/10

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

© 2012, 2008 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.

| | |

No Romance, Few Laughs And Taylor Swift Acts All Sink Valentine's Day! (A Movie Even Anne Hathaway Can't Save!)

The Good: Moments of character, Looks good on the surface
The Bad: Underdeveloped storylines, Acting is often stiff or hammy, Not funny, Light on charm.
The Basics: Lacking in humor, originality and even a real sense of romance, Valentine's Day is a mediocre-at-best romantic comedy.

I have nothing against either complicated storylines or movies with big casts. Both are masterfully used in, for example, Magnolia which tells a sufficiently complex story to warrant sixteen main characters and demand a running time of over three hours. So, when I start ranting about Valentine's Day, it's not that I was inherently prejudiced against it. The fundamental problem with Valentine's Day is not that it has a big cast or that it has a complicated storyline, it is that it has a remarkably simple and underdeveloped plethora of stories and it uses a big, Hollywood cast to tell them with.

Sometimes, I sit down to watch a movie and I look at all of the actors in it and I think, "They're banking on the moviegoing audience being willing to shell out for any one of these sixteen people to fill the seats." I thought that last year about He's Just Not That Into You and I know that, despite all of the previews that made the movie look terrible, I eventually said, "I like Drew Barrymore and Jennifer Connelly, I'll give it a try." I spent the rest of the year regretting that decision. And this year, the movie that is disappointing me in a similar way already is Valentine's Day. And while He's Just Not That Into You might have been terrible, Valentine's Day is just underdeveloped and relying more on star power than actual performances. It is a film too often lacking in charm, actual romanticism and even much in the way of laughs.

Reed wakes up on Valentine's Day and proposes to his roommate, Morley and is thrilled when she accepts. Reed goes on to run his Los Angeles flower shop on his busiest day of the year. His good friend, Julia, is eager to share her own story of burgeoning love, with a doctor who is not on the same page as her. Kara prepares to throw her annual "I Hate Valentine's Day" bash, but is frustrated when none of her guests r.s.v.p. Throughout the day, Kara works as a p.r. representative for a football star who is using the day to make an important press announcement and complicating Kara’s life. At her dinner, though, Kara meets Kelvin and they hit it off and others show up, most notably Julia.

Interwoven with these stories are vignettes with high school students Felicia and Willy groping one another in their enthusiasm and Grace and Alex planning their first time. As well, two strangers on a plane, Holden and Kate, get to talking about love and two twentysomething coworkers try to figure out where their dating is going. And to play lip service to mature love, Edgar and Estelle are thrown a few lines and are given a moment to surprise one another in a surprise most people will see coming a mile away.

It seldom takes me much time to review movies I've just seen, but in the case of Valentine's Day, I've been dragging my heels because I don't care. Two hours and news that a sequel is already in the works left me with no enthusiasm for this movie for three big reasons.

The first is that none of the stories are fully developed and pop enough to make them compelling or even remotely rewatchable. With each new plotline being introduced, I came to feel "why are they doing this?! Why don't they go back and finish more with . . .?" As a real statement on how utterly mediocre the film is, those ellipsis were not most commonly filled with Liz (Anne Hathaway's character); I actually cared more about seeing where things were going for Kara. But in true fashion of an overcrowded movie, Paula (Queen Latifah) and Alphonso (George Lopez) could have been edited out and the movie would not have lost anything. In fact, their presence seems more like director Garry Marshall started filming, said, "I'm seeing a lot of white here; this is Los Angeles, we should add some diversity" (whatwith Kelvin, played by Jamie Foxx, becoming more prominent in the latter portion of the film).

The second is that Valentine's Day is not romantic. The movie is so absent on charm that it's almost easy to miss it in the shuffling of characters. Rather than capturing young love, Willy and Felicia come across simply as goofy. Rather than coming across as maturely in love, Edgar and Estelle come across as sedate; this just reinforces the erroneous stereotype that married couples are boring and that young love is exciting. And the in-between just seemed like a lot of adults behaving like teenagers on mood swings. The characters are seldom about open, honest dialogue, though Kara and Kelvin get to some of that. Largely, though, the movie is about people's expectations being upended on Valentine's Day and how the characters roll with that, or fail to. The thing is, because most of them do not have any specific or endearing traits, it's hard to care about them.

Finally, the movie is not funny. Katherine Fugate's screenplay is remarkably dry and while performers like Bradley Cooper and Julia Roberts do their best to add their sparkling eyes and hesitant smiles to the parts, the lines are still very mediocre back and forths that are not particularly charming or interesting. In fact, having seen the movie, I went back and rewatched the trailers and the way some of the lines are cut and timed for the preview trailer was actually funnier than in the film. While this is, of course, what a trailer is supposed to do, the lack of laughs actually left me feeling cheated as much of the film is far more turbulent than funny.

Rather than go through the entire cast list and picking apart the mediocre from the adequate performances, on the acting front, I think I'll only mention Emma Roberts. Roberts plays Grace and the young actress holds her own in a pretty massive cast. Roberts, Emma Roberts (Julia is in the film, too), actually makes good use out of her few scenes by playing her character as smart, mature and entirely plausible. In fact, while there has been much hype about Taylor Swift, whose part is so ridiculous it is tough to criticize her acting because she didn't have a lot to work with, Emma Roberts is the one to watch for a thoughtful and worthwhile performance.

On DVD, Valentine’s Day is loaded up with fourteen deleted scenes and a commentary track, as well as previews for several “chick flicks.” This does not make it any more worth buying.

Even so, there's not enough here to make me recommend the movie to anyone, so one might as well wait for the next thing Emma Roberts is in. Valentine's Day is just not worth it.

For other romance movies or romantic comedies, please check out my reviews of:
Twilight
Easy A
The Spitfire Grill

4/10

For more movie reviews, please check out my index page!

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


| | |