Will Gluck Goes 2-2 With His Problematic Rendition Of Annie

The Good: Decent performances, Good (enough) story
The Bad: Direction/editing, Character types
The Basics: Annie is an ill-executed modernized version of the classic orphan story.


I am a fan of the works of Will Gluck. Gluck directed two films that get shown quite a lot around my household to visitors - Easy A (reviewed here!) and Friends With Benefits (reviewed here!). Gluck is a competent, entertaining writer-director who has something to say with his films and is already garnering a loyal cadre of actors who eagerly appear in his films, even as cameos. But until the Olive Bridge logo came up on Annie, I had no idea that Gluck was affiliated with the new film, which has been plugged at a ton of films I’ve seen this year. Olive Bridge is a reference to his protagonist from Easy A and was the name of the headhunting agency Mila Kunis’s character worked for in Friends With Benefits, so when the Olive Bridge logo came up, I was suddenly excited about a film that I otherwise had no real interest in seeing.

That excitement did not last long and, unfortunately, Will Gluck and/or the editor of Annie, Tia Nolan, are to blame. Annie is one of the rare films where the assembly of the film robs the viewer of much of the enjoyment of watching it. Will Gluck’s rendition of Annie is an obvious attempt for Gluck to get what he has long-deserved; mainstream recognition and a legitimate blockbuster. The near-Christmas release is a family film that is designed to compete against the final The Hobbit film by drawing younger audiences and black audiences (who have not, traditionally, been driving up the grosses on the Middle Earth movies) to the theaters the same weekend. But the Jamie Foxx/Cameron Diaz vehicle, which follows Gluck’s pattern of mocking the style of film he is presenting (in this case, musical), is put together in a way that does not allow any of the performers to truly showcase their talents, nor give the audience moments of catharsis for the character’s reactions.

Annie tells the familiar story of an orphaned girl – in this case, a ten year-old in foster care – who is taken in by a rich benefactor. Annie lives with four other girls in the home of Hannigan, an alcoholic who takes in foster girls just for the $157 the State pays her a month. Will Stacks is the CEO of Stacks Mobile, a cell phone company that is built upon the precedent of never dropping a call (which he delivers upon by hiding cell phone “towers” in plain sight on buildings all around New York City). Stacks has been encouraged by his right-hand man, Guy, to run for Mayor of New York City, but his campaign gets off to a rough start when his attempt to feed the homeless results in a viral video of him spitting out mashed potatoes at a homeless man. One day, when Annie is trying to protect a dog from two hooligans who are harassing it, Stacks rescues Annie from getting hit by a car. The resulting viral video gives Stacks a bump in the polls.

Guy recommends that Stacks take Annie in to help him win the race against Mayor Harold Gray. After a lunch meeting, Annie agrees to help Stacks (Hannigan was going to kick her out anyway after the social worker visited and Annie extorted her for a trip to the library). While Stacks’s assistant, Grace, has reservations about using Annie, she begins to bond with Annie. As the campaign goes on, Guy sees the only way to win the race is by jettisoning Annie after her part leads to a plateau within striking distance of Gray. Guy conspires with Hannigan to have Annie’s “parents” find her, but Annie feels like she has finally found her family and when she learns the truth, she assumes that Stacks never truly loved her or wanted her for his family.

Annie is a musical that attempts to exist in the real-world and it exists there in a murky, troubling, way. Initially, it is unclear how the film will tread; Annie’s first song is a distraction for a school assignment. But, she and her musical foster-sisters are called out by Hannigan when they sing while they clean. So, this is supposed to be the real world where it is very much an anomaly when people break into song and dance routines. Gluck manages to pull off the narrative aspect of the songs popping up well-enough (Annie often sings to herself or sings publicly to Stacks’s crowd), until late in the film. Hannigan and (especially) Guy are not creative people, so when they break into song (even if Hannigan acknowledges it) it just does not work. Equally troubling is the helicopter ride that results in Annie and Stacks singing to one another in which Annie does a little dance move before it is even clear they are singing!

But the bulk of the problem with the musical aspect of this incarnation of Annie is in the directing or editing. My affection for the works of Will Gluck, which often have moments that involve song/dance/decent cutting that has a visual rhythm to the scenes, makes me want to blame editor Tia Nolan (though Gluck, presumably, signed off on her editing). From the second song (“Hard Knocks Life”) on, the songs are almost universally cut in such a way that the singing and dancing of the subjects of the scenes is not well-showcased. For example, in “Hard Knocks Life,” the foster girls are tossing plates to one another in rhythm. The shots are cut in such a way that the rhythm is not established or maintained long enough to be enjoyable. In other words, by the time a plate is caught or thrown, the shot changes angle so it has an assembled look that does not showcase the talents of those putting a rhythm to the exchange. The best analogy for this would be a stunt fighter whose stunts were cut so that one sees them about to take a hit, then falling, then getting up (i.e. not having the hit appear to connect, nor have them hitting the ground, etc.). That type of gap does not allow one to appreciate the dance moves, scope or simple sense of motion of the big song and dance numbers throughout the film.

At least as troubling is how Gluck and Nolan rob the film of the big emotional moment for Stacks. At a museum fundraiser, Stacks uses Annie as a prop and when she sings to his crowd of potential donor, Stacks realizes that Annie has grown attached to him and that she is emotionally invested in the potential future he offered her. The only way viewers know what Stacks is going through is by the performance of Jamie Foxx. Foxx watches Quvenzhane Wallis’s Annie and he undergoes an emotional transformation without a word, only with subtle changes to his facial expression. The problem here is that the scene is cut in such a way that the viewer is not treated to the full transformation. The camera does not stay on Foxx’s face long enough for him to make the emotional statement he intends. This is sloppy and undermines the impact of the entire scene.

The song and dance numbers are further diminished by conceits that make no sense in a real world where people in the scenes are breaking into song and dance. Most notably, in one song where Cameron Diaz’s Hannigan is singing on her own, she is clearly accompanied by back-up singers and production elements that change her vocal quality. Of course, Diaz’s entire character is out-of-place in a modern adaptation of Annie. Hannigan as rendered in this version of Annie is a cruel has-been (more accurately, would-have-been – she got fired before actually dancing with C&C Music Factory) who is using the foster children for the monetary stipend they provide. But this version of Hannigan does not ring true in our modern world. Hannigan makes sense if she has a vice – to go dark, if she had been a drug abuser –, a goal (she needed the money to better herself, like by going to college or funding a small business, which could have been a cool twist if she was essentially using foster children as slave labor), or was just lazy (she is far too actively angry to be truly lazy or credibly as alcoholic as the characters around her claim). Instead, Hannigan seems more like an anachronism than a truly vital or viable character.

That said, Annie gives Rose Byrne a high point to end the year on. Byrne exploded to prominence this year with her role in Neighbors (reviewed here!) and Annie showcases a wider range of her talents. She sings and dances well (though her big song with Wallis wherein she is showing the girl Stacks’s penthouse apartment is notably robbed of flow and continuity of scope) and she provides a human connection that allows the viewer to believe that Annie might be happy with Stacks for more than just materialistic reasons.

Foxx and Wallis are fine in their roles of Will Stacks and Annie, though neither is given the chance to mine very deep for their characters. Foxx’s Stacks is unremarkable and seems to have less ambition than Bobby Canavale’s Guy. Annie is presented by Wallis with such resilience that Hannigan’s threat that she’ll end up in a group home does not seem like it would set her back and that the character’s literacy issue that comes up late in the film seems entirely unrealistic; she is smart, sassy and driven – how she has never sought out someone to help her read seems unrealistic. Cameron Diaz is over-the-top as Hannigan. Both David Zayas and Adewale Akinnoye-Agbaje are welcome additions to the cast, but are placed in fairly understated roles.

Ultimately, Annie is a film that suffers because its well-established, oft-rendered story means that the writer-directors of the project have to rely upon twists to the known and/or style to sell the new rendition. But Will Gluck’s Annie is put together in such a way that its stylistic flairs fall short and the film’s full impact can be achieved simply through watching the trailer.

For other films currently in theaters, please check out my reviews of:
To Write Love On Her Arms
The Seventh Son
Vice
Paddington
Inherent Vice
Selma
Still Alice
Predestination
The Interview
The Hobbit: The Battle Of The Five Armies
Expelled
Comet
Horrible Bosses 2
10,000 Days
The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 1
Interstellar
The Mule
Hit By Lightning
Horns
Stonehearst Asylum
Birdman

4/10

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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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.
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Predictable And Funny, Ted Helps Seth MacFarlane Make The Leap To (Almost) Live-Action Films!

The Good: Very funny, Decent acting, Excellent effects.
The Bad: Painfully predictable plot, Reused jokes.
The Basics: Ted is funny, but remarkably predictable, especially for fans of Seth MacFarlane’s wildly popular Family Guy.


When Seth MacFarlane alluded to a movie project in the opening scrawl to It’s A Trap! (reviewed here!) to a movie project he wanted to get released to pursue, I was a bit skeptical. After all, outside the three main animated projects MacFarlane has created and executive produced, the only other work of his I’d seen was Seth MacFarlane’s Cavalcade Of Cartoon Comedy (reviewed here!) and it was atrocious. In fact, the idea that MacFarlane could be a one-trick pony or might not be able to create sustained larger projects is not a particularly audacious one. Unfortunately, despite how entertaining Ted is, it only helps to reinforce the idea that the career of Seth MacFarlane may well have jumped the shark.

Fans of Family Guy, the very fans Seth MacFarlane is counting on to support Ted will recognize several jokes – like Ted complaining about the way pop singers sang vowels in the 1990s – from Family Guy. That there is an explicit reference to MacFarlane’s breakout animated series in the movie is similarly unfortunate, as is Seth MacFarlane voicing the title character. MacFarlane is a talented vocal actor, but the truth is he has pretty much shot his wad through Family Guy and American Dad!. With the distinctly different voices of Brian, Peter and Stewie Griffin and Quagmire coming from the same source (along with the similar voice of Carter Pewtershmidt and others), Ted might have worked better had Seth MacFarlane let someone else voice Ted.

All of that aside, Ted is a fairly innovative and fun concept for a comedy film. And Seth MacFarlane directed Ted at the right time in movie history; computer generated effects make the extraordinary premise look and feel entirely plausible. The basic premise is ridiculously simple: the main human character (John Bennett) has a sentient teddy bear (Ted) as a best friend. The film hinges entirely upon the virtual character interacting with the live-action characters absolutely seamlessly. In many ways, Ted is the film that Robert Zemeckis wanted to make with Who Framed Roger Rabbit? Any other issues with the writing and characters aside, Ted is arguably the best use of a computer-generated character in years. The effects are flawless and Mark Wahlberg, who does the lion’s share of acting opposite the virtual character, performs incredibly well, interacting with Ted as if the bear was actually there. As simplistic as it might seem, the ability to act well with entities that are not present and get things like eyelines and comedic timing right is a skill that very few performers get right, but Wahlberg does!

Opening with a childhood wish, John Bennett as a child is granted a talking teddy bear who becomes a real friend who will never leave him. John reveal Ted to his parents and overnight, the talking teddy bear becomes an instant celebrity. Years later, though, Ted is just a burnout who lives with John, who struggles at the rental car place where he hopes to become manager someday. John has been in a relationship with Lori for four years and when John fails to propose to her, she gives him an ultimatum. She wants Ted to move out so they can begin their life together for real.

John tries to push Ted away, which he has a vested interest in as Lori’s boss, Rex, hits on her relentlessly, but even as Ted gets a job at a grocery store, he pulls at John to continue their symbiotic relationship. On an important date night, Ted calls John to come visit him to meet their childhood hero, Sam Jones (who played Flash Gordon). That night effectively trashes the relationship between John and Lori, but in the ensuing fall-out, John pushes Ted away. On his own, Ted falls to the mercy of a man for whom Ted was a childhood hero and when Ted is kidnapped, he desperately calls upon John and Lori to save him.

Ted is basically a long collection of drug, poop, and sex jokes delivered during a fairly uncomplicated relationship struggle. The plot is very much a typical romantic comedy plot where the romantic interest does not like the best friend. Outside the CG character, there is nothing more sophisticated to Ted than that. As such, the plot progression is painfully predictable and MacFarlane telegraphs all of his moves, from having Giovanni Ribisi’s creepy Donny showing up early in the movie and John folding up his contact information to Frank responding to Ted being aggressively honest. That does not make Ted bad, it is just unsophisticated and more obvious than it is audacious.

Seth MacFarlane assembles what would otherwise be an impressive cast for Ted. For fans of MacFarlane’s other works, this is just an assemblage of the usual suspects. Mila Kunis, Alex Borstein, John Viener, and Patrick Warburton are instantly recognizable to fans of Family Guy who have watched all the many hours of DVD bonus features from the series. In fact, Ted makes tongue-in-cheek references to doing just that by presenting a fake DVD commentary from Ted Danson for the Cheers DVD set in the film (“Are there dicks in gay porn?” has become a pretty much instantaneous catch phrase around my house since my wife and I watched the film). The less-obvious performers from Family Guy are joined by Mark Wahlberg who joins the ensemble exceptionally well. Wahlberg is funny as John and he and Mila Kunis have great on-screen chemistry as Kunis plays Lori.

Ultimately, Ted is good geek date night material, but it is not much more than entertaining. It does what it sets out to do very well, but nothing more.

For other works with Giovanni Ribisi, please check out my reviews of:
Avatar
Public Enemies
Sky Captain And The World Of Tomorrow
Friends
Lost In Translation

7/10

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

© 2013 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Family Guy Volume 10 Continues The Disappointment!

The Good: Some amusing allusions, Great animation
The Bad: Not terribly funny, Bland plots, Dull sense of characters, Only one truly funny joke the entire boxed set.
The Basics: Family Guy Volume 10 is a collection of fourteen episodes that continue to illustrate just how far the series has fallen.


I was, for the longest time, a fan of Family Guy; I was thrilled when it was brought back on the air and I kept watching it even after the last of their Star Wars parodies fell flat. I never truly got into American Dad! and The Cleveland Show struck out even faster for me, but I generally enjoyed Family Guy until the point where it seemed like there was some form of directive from Seth MacFarlane that each episode would contain at least one incest joke and that wore thin ridiculously fast for me.

Family Guy Volume 10 comes after that point and the show has truly jumped the shark. More than in any prior DVD set, I found myself not laughing and the stories to be truly derivative. In fact, episodes in this set like “Baby, You Knock Me Out” seem like they are taken directly from The Simpsons. There was truly only one sequence in the three-disc set that led me to laugh; a (mostly) live-action sequence wherein Bill Maher calls out Brian on being a fraud.

In this boxed set of Family Guy, episodes tell the story of Peter, Joe and Quagmire’s escalating Halloween pranks on one another and Meg and Chris’s first big high school party (where they grossly end up making out together). Lois channels her anger into foxy boxing and Brian writes a self-help book that makes him a best-selling author, at the cost of the respect of the people he actually cares about. This is the set that includes the stories of Stewie and Brian’s journey to the North Pole to meet Santa and Peter needing a kidney transplant, which threatens to be the end of Brian.

Joyce Kinney’s backstory is explored when she outs Lois’s past . . . as a one-time porn actress! Peter and Brian join Alcoholics Anonymous, but get all the drunks in Quaohog off the wagon. Chris makes a new friend, in the form of an old man who Herbert believes is an old Nazi he was once captured by. Meg develops an unhealthy infatuation with Joe, Chris and Meg swap places with Peter and Lois and discover being adults is easier for them than being kids, and Quagmire and Brian war with one another over their lost loves: Cheryl Tiegs and Jillian. Lois’s sister gets engaged to Mayor Adam West, Bertram returns to kill Stewie (inadvertently destroying the universe), and Lois has to try to stop Bonnie from having an affair in France while Peter home schools Meg and Chris.

The jokes in Family Guy hit few and far between. After gross-out jokes like Meg and Chris making out in the closet at a party and then being proud about it, the show only effectively hits with live-action gags like Brian appearing on Bill Maher and Lois and Bonnie appearing as Muppet-style puppets for a sequence.

As a largely episodic show, there are few episodes that have real consequences past the episode that is currently on. There remain some ramifications from the prior set’s murder mystery episode – Joyce Kinney’s presence and the absence of Jillian’s husband and Muriel Goldman – but there is no real character development. Peter home schooling the kids seems familiar to loyal viewers because Lois taught them in a prior season, yet that is not referenced in that episode.

The animation in this season is exceptional; the CG animation looks great on HD televisions. On DVD, there are numerous commentary tracks, but (like the episodes) none of them really rock the way some of the earlier ones did. Instead, this is a boxed set that illustrates that the shark has been firmly jumped with Family Guy and it is hard to remain a fan at this point.

For other animated works by Seth MacFarlane, please check out my reviews of:
Family Guy Volume 1
Family Guy Volume 2
Family Guy Presents Stewie Griffin: The Untold Story
Family Guy: Live In Vegas
Family Guy Volume 3
Family Guy Volume 4
Family Guy Volume 5
Family Guy Presents Blue Harvest
Family Guy Volume 6
Family Guy Volume 7
Family Guy Presents Something, Something, Something Dark Side
Seth MacFarlane's Cavalcade Of Cartoon Comedy
Family Guy Volume 8
Family Guy Presents Partial Terms Of Endearment
Family Guy Presents It's A Trap!
Family Guy Volume 9

2/10

For other television shows, please visit my Television Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2013 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Three Years Later, Disney Repackages Its Last Weird Success With Oz The Great And Powerful

The Good: Decent special effects, Good pacing
The Bad: Predictable plot, character arcs, and themes, Relies far too much on spectacle over effect.
The Basics: Cinephiles and actual witches will have plenty to complain about when Disney repackages its 2010 film Alice In Wonderland as the astonishingly similar and familiar special effects-driven Oz The Great And Powerful.


Coming out of the yearly cinematic doldrums of February (one of two times of the year where movie releases go to die), March inevitably kicks off the big-budget films that the studios release early so they will not have to compete with the ultra-blockbusters released during Summer Blockbuster Season. Unfortunately, March is not known for releasing truly great films, just big films that are in a better market position than the February releases. This year is, of course, no different. However, it is hard not to feel like audiences are being taken as suckers this particular March with the release of Oz The Great And Powerful. Disney is releasing Oz The Great And Powerful to be the first big blockbuster of the year and it is a tactic in 2010 when they released Tim Burton’s vision of Alice In Wonderland (reviewed here!).

Disney is, no doubt, hoping that people will not notice the similarities in release date (Alice In Wonderland was released on March 5, 2010, Oz The Great And Powerful will break to the public on March 8, 2013), merchandising push and attempts to tap the virtually identical fan-bases. No doubt, Disney publicists are pushing talking points for all of the talent should any of them be asked about Oz The Great And Powerful and Alice In Wonderland (you can pretty much bet that within the first five interviews of actors/directors/producers/etc. someone will very pointedly note that Alice In Wonderland was a reimagined sequel, while Oz The Great And Powerful is a prequel to the previously-established The Wizard Of Oz. It is important for the producers to make that distinction; they need the audience to believe they will be watching a different movie.

It is, alas, all window-dressing. Oz The Great And Powerful is essentially Disney’s Alice In Wonderland set in Oz, where the protagonist is not struggling to remember herself and her past, but rather to grow into a man who will lead a very different future. Both are very obvious stories about a hero in the process of becoming, both rely heavily on spectacle over strong storytelling and both made reviews utterly pointless to 90% of the potential audience. Oz The Great And Powerful will be a smash success for Disney, just like Alice In Wonderland was, not because of any inherent quality of its own, but rather because it comes with such a massive fanbase that it cannot be anything but a success.

That said, Oz The Great And Powerful is not unenjoyable, but it is thoroughly obvious and it is, at best, a popcorn movie that seeks to entertain and overwhelm as opposed to telling a story that is worthwhile or compelling.

Starting in Kansas, Oscar Diggs is a simple illusionist. He entertains at the carnival, but he is a magician who is engaged in slight-of-hand and simple science, not one who calls upon any magical forces. So, when his balloon is whisked off in a funnel cloud, he is shocked to awaken in a world where magic is very real. After quickly determining that he is not, in fact, dreaming, Oscar is told where he is by Theodora, a woman who treats the magical Land of Oz as mundane. Theodora takes Oscar to her sister, Evanora, who believes she can use Oscar against her enemies.

Quickly seduced by the potential of the vast wealth of gold, gems, and treasures found in Oz, Oscar slowly comes to realize that Theodora and Evanora are not exactly who they claim to be. When he learns of the plight of most of the citizens of Oz through Glinda, Oscar must choose a side and raise an army to stop the oppression of the people of Oz, in the process becoming the great man – and a man of substance – that he never was before.

First, the good: Oz The Great And Powerful is as visually amazing as fans and cinephiles would hope it could be. Disney has, apparently, used the last three years exceptionally well. While Alice In Wonderland had moments that looked exceptionally like one was watching an awkward animated movie, Oz The Great And Powerful does not; it looks like a true, real setting. The 3-D is incredible and the creatures look like they match the real-world (which is mostly CG in Oz, though the actors are, largely, real). While some of the creatures look derivative – one of the earliest creatures seen in Oz bears a striking resemblance to the Tooth Fairies from Hellboy 2: The Golden Army (reviewed here!) - Oz The Great And Powerful tries hard to make the sense of magic and wonder match The Wizard Of Oz while employing the latest technology to push the envelope of what can be done.

As well, the pacing in Oz The Great And Powerful is good. The film is long, but it does not feel long, it moves at a decent pace, establishing wonder and reversal with a very steady sense of movement.

Unfortunately, where the movie is going is hardly original . . . on pretty much any front. One of the key battles between Glinda and the Wicked Witch was shot in a way that reminded me a great deal of the final battle in Dark City (reviewed here!). Everything else just seemed like it was plotted out from Alice In Wonderland, though Oz The Great And Powerful does not belabor Oscar whining about whether or not Oz is real (unlike Alice’s prolonged whining in the other film), which is nice. Heroes in the process of becoming are familiar stories and it is tough to do something new with that, especially in a single movie, but Oz The Great And Powerful does not even try; it goes with an obvious, formulaic progression as Oscar is tempted, learns the truth, learns a deeper truth, and digs into his soul to take the obvious high road. Hell, in true Disney form, he goes with the blonde!

The best we might say about the acting in Oz The Great And Powerful is that almost all the time, the performers interact with the virtual sets and characters flawlessly. Beyond that . . . James Franco is stiff and he plays Oscar as a man playing charming, as opposed to a character who is innately charming. This is, unfortunately, not the worst the film has to offer in terms of performances. Mila Kunis often seems like she is sleepwalking through the role of Theodora and Michelle Williams’s performance of Glinda is monotonous. Williams plays in a narrow sliver of emotional depth for the character – quickly illustrating deep pathos for the citizens of Oz, but opting for an optimism that seems utterly simplistic in this day in age. Rachel Weisz abandons all subtlety as Evanora the longer the film goes on and her performance lacks any genuine emotional depth.

Oz The Great And Powerful is a popcorn movie and for those who go for family-friendly, big-budget special effects films, the film will satisfy. It is solidly entertaining. Unfortunately, it is nothing beyond that; Disney aims for spectacle over meaning and they nail it perfectly for that with Oz The Great And Powerful.

For other Disney live-action works, please check out my reviews of:
The Odd Life Of Timothy Green
John Carter
Pirates Of The Caribbean: On Stranger Tides
Tron: Legacy
Oceans
Prince Of Persia: The Sands Of Time
Old Dogs
G-Force
Pirates Of The Caribbean: At World's End
Pirates Of The Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest
The Chronicles Of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe
Pirates Of The Caribbean: The Curse Of The Black Pearl
The Princess Diaries 2: A Royal Engagement
The Princess Diaries
Tron
4/10

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

© 2013 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Family Guy Volume 9 Is A Flat-Out Disappointment.

The Good: Animation quality, DVD bonus features
The Bad: Largely not funny, No genuine character development, “Jokes” that are predictable and just gross.
The Basics: In a predictable sequence of dull plots fleshed out with at least one incest joke per episode, Family Guy Volume 9 rapidly distinguishes itself as the worst compilation of the series.


It used to be that I was right on top of Family Guy DVD releases. It’s not like now I am not on top of them because I am unable to be, either; it is because I have lost interest. I caught the episodes from the last two DVD sets in their first run on FOX, loathed them, and decided not to waste my effort on considering them. However, on Black Friday last year, my wife and I were out and the first set I had not yet added to our permanent library or reviewed was on sale for less than $10. I figured that was about the right price for me and she picked it up for the holidays. It took us until last night to get through the fourteen episodes contained therein.

Family Guy Volume 9 makes it clear that the show has jumped the shark and overstayed its welcome. Gone is the clever, edgy, often satirical lampooning of politics, pop culture and history. Instead, we get an incest joke per episode and plots that feel like they have been done before (if not on Family Guy, then on The Simpsons). More than ever before, Volume 9 of Family Guy makes the viewer feel like Family Guy is unimaginatively treading where The Simpsons (which it, admittedly, exceptionally tired now itself!) had already gone several time and in order to keep the illusion of originality up, the writers go for jokes that aren’t funny, aren’t original, and are homogenously rape or incest-related. Note to the Family Guy writers: it’s not funny. The rape and incest jokes were not funny the first dozen times you told the joke; why did you think it would suddenly become humorous the twenty-fourth through thirty-eighth times?!

So, what is in Family Guy Volume 9? This three-disc set contains fourteen episodes – one of which is double-long. This is the collection that features Peter taking over Carter Pewterschmidt’s business when his father-in-law falls into a coma, Brian tries writing a magazine article and discovers Meg is dating a convict, which results in Meg going to prison and coming out hardened and evil. Peter pretends to be psychic, is sexually harassed by his boss at the brewery, and goes in search of the origin to a particularly raunchy joke. In the meantime, Brian dates Quagmire’s post-op transgendered father, the residents of Quahog fall victim to a killer in a mansion and have to solve a whodunit, and Carter’s marriage is threatened when he has an affair, which Peter takes advantage of to blackmail him.

Outside the death of one peripheral character in “And Then There Were Fewer,” which leads to a new peripheral character filling their same role, there is no real character development in Volume 9 of Family Guy. Meg goes to prison, comes out and sodomizes Peter with a luffah on a stick in the shower, but is back to being the butt of everyone’s jokes by the end of the episode. Similarly, Stewie and Brian do not really grow or develop and Lois and Chris have remarkably little air time.

On the plus side, the animation in the episodes in this volume is incredible. Sets and many of the situations are now handled via computer animation, so there are smoother transitions, bolder designs and the show looks good. Similarly, on DVD, there are wonderful extras, like commentary tracks, deleted scenes, and multiple featurettes on each disc.

Unfortunately, the bonus features do not bring up the quality of the source material and Family Guy Volume 9 is a pretty stunning waste of time and money. Even at less than $10 on sale, it boils down to: this is a series of episodes that have not stepped beyond the bounds of good taste, they have simply stopped making us laugh. We wish, despite the many hours of enjoyment they used to bring us, they would simply stop.

For other animated works by Seth MacFarlane, please check out my reviews of:
Family Guy Volume 1
Family Guy Volume 2
Family Guy Presents Stewie Griffin: The Untold Story
Family Guy: Live In Vegas
Family Guy Volume 3
Family Guy Volume 4
Family Guy Volume 5
Family Guy Presents Blue Harvest
Family Guy Volume 6
Family Guy Volume 7
Family Guy Presents Something, Something, Something Dark Side
Seth MacFarlane's Cavalcade Of Cartoon Comedy
Family Guy Volume 8
Family Guy Presents Partial Terms Of Endearment
Family Guy Presents It's A Trap!

3/10

For other television shows, please visit my Television Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2013 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Post-Apocalyptic Christian Theater: The Book Of Eli Is Dark And Troublingly Familiar.

The Good: Themes, Acting, Setting
The Bad: Plot structure is very familiar, Brutal mood
The Basics: Following an apocalypse, a man protects the last known bible in The Book Of Eli.


As I looked through my library of reviews, I was actually shocked to realize how very few films starring Denzel Washington I have actually seen or reviewed. I have long recognized him as a great actor and I have enjoyed the works I have seen that he is featured in, but her remains one of the great actors whose filmography I have limited direct experience with. So, as I debated today which of the films to knock off my “want to watch” list, it was unsurprising that The Book Of Eli with Denzel Washington leapt to the top of the list.

Recently, I saw a preview for The Book Of Eli before another film and I was intrigued. I was quite surprised that I had missed the film in theaters. Perhaps I let it pass by because I was not yet a big fan of The Walking Dead (season 1 reviewed here!) or the whole post-apocalyptic genre. Now that I am, though, I was eager to watch The Book Of Eli and for the most part it did not disappoint.

In the wake of a cataclysm, a lone man hunts a cat in a burned-out forest before wandering on to the nearest shell of a former city. After a night in the house of a hanged man, he encounters a band of ruffians on the road. After dispatching of them and witnessing a motorcycle gang kill and rape two others, he continues west to a small town of survivors. There, the local power is Carnegie – the one who hired the motorcycle gang – whose sole objective is to find a book. The man fends off an attack from the motorcycle gang’s leader when trying to get his water refilled.

In refusing to take advantage of Solara or her blind mother, the man (Eli) inadvertently reveals to Carnegie that he has the very book Carnegie has been searching the world over for. But, while Carnegie wants the book, a bible, to enslave and control, Eli moves west in search of a place where his faith might be rewarded and he can help rebuild the world. After Eli moves on, Solara follows him and he must rescue her from bandits and together the two head west, trying to elude Carnegie and his forces.

My fundamental problem with The Book Of Eli comes from how it buys into the most common conceits of the genre. The post-apocalyptic genre commonly portrays a world where man is set against every other man in a desperate fight for survival. While many of the dystopian situations intrigued me, now it has become a common genre and one where I find myself less impressed by the continuation of. I completely understand how, facing the destruction of the world we know, most people will become frustrated and fight over the last canned foods, stockpile guns and water and hunker down to defend what little they have. I get that (I have a plan for myself and my family in that regard), but the stories that take place longer after the actual apocalypse are rapidly becoming passé. The films seldom illustrate how the human spirit endures and our desire for freedom is stronger than the quest to dominate.

Thirty years after the apocalypse, it is hard to imagine even the degenerates will still believe they can get anything of use by raping and killing anyone who passes by. Far more likely, in the wake of the established world order coming to an end, after a few years of unpleasantness, the survivors hunker down in houses that they do not pay mortgages on, farm what they can grow and hunt what they can eat enough to survive. So, while the setting of The Book Of Eli - the desert wasteland of the American West – seems initially intriguing, it really is more of a cliché now than anything audacious.

That said, I like the philosophical bent of The Book Of Eli. The Book Of Eli is basically about people from the world before the war that wiped out humanity attempting to bring religion back to the world. It’s the classic story of using religion to exert power (as represented by Carnegie) vs. a person of actual faith (Eli). The Book Of Eli is laudable for taking the view that is unpopular in the current political climate that organized religion is the cause of more suffering than it is the source of joy and a positive series of guidelines for people to live by in order to live better with one another. I like that about the film.

As for the characters, they are more average than truly memorable or distinctive. Carnegie is a monolithic villain, a senseless evil who wants to dominate and exerts his power over those around him. Eli is a monolithic good, despite the methods he lives by in order to protect the book. The unfortunate character is Solara. She is a generic sidekick and rapebait, who is not given a real chance to evolve in the film.

Still, the principles in The Book Of Eli are good. Mila Kunis, Ray Stevenson, and Jennifer Beals each make the most out of their time on screen, even if their characters are more one-dimensional than incredible. Gary Oldman plays another villain who is well-created by the versatile actor, though the role seems more familiar than new. The same can be said for Denzel Washington; he plays Eli well, but it seems well within his established range.

Directors Albert and Allen Hughes make The Book Of Eli look good; in fact, in the case of the costumes, too good. Thirty years after the apocalypse, it is hard to believe there are no bibles, but there are (apparently) sweatshops. The clothes on many of the characters look underworn and that is a detail that is way off. The soundtrack sounded a lot like the main theme from Prometheus (reviewed here!), which actually made me respect that film just a little less for being derivative. Even so, The Book Of Eli is good, but for fans of the post-apocalyptic genre, it has very little we have not already seen before.

For other post-apocalyptic visions, please visit my reviews of:
I Am Legend
Doomsday
Jeremiah - Season 1

6/10

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

© 2013 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Funny And Quirky, Extract Makes For A Worthwhile Diversion!

The Good: Good acting, Very funny, Moments that are clever
The Bad: A lot of very obvious humor, Light on character development.
The Basics: A surprisingly decent film, the short Extract is worth seeing for anyone who likes zany humor presented by a great cast.


It is a good time to be David Koechner, at least in my house. The character actor is in a boatload of my wife's DVDs and it seems like whenever I take her out to the movies, he is in them lately (whatwith my wife’s love of screwball, often idiotic, comedies). He had an oddly homophobic (literally) role in The Goods: Live Hard Sell Hard which we saw just a few weeks ago. He now pops up in Extract, the new film by Mike Judge and it is easy to see why he continues to get work.

Koechner is a steady supporting actor who has an amazing ability to play off virtually any other actor. He always seems to have such earnest, eye-popping deliveries of his line (he is often given over-the-top moments to perform and he plays them brilliantly by usually understating them, so if the moment calls for an absolutely absurd line, he says it as if it were the most obvious matter-of-fact statement, etc.) and in Extract, he continues that tradition as Nathan. And every scene he is in with Jason Bateman's Joel, Koechner steals the scene.

Joel owns an extract company and he returns home from it each night hoping to score with his wife. More often than not, he is held up by his neighbor, Nathan, for pointless conversations that waste his time and he finds his wife not in the mood. So, he returns to work the next day trying to get out of the humdrum life he finds himself in. Unfortunately, when one of his workers is partially-castrated as part of a work-related accident, Joel finds his company is in serious trouble. Things do not get better for him at work with the arrival of con-artist Cindy, whom he takes an instant shine to. Neither do things get better for him at home when he allows his bartender friend Dean to hook him up with some drugs and a witless plan to get his wife, Suzie, to cheat.

As Step sues Reynolds Extract, Joel tries to get the business in line for a sale so he can get out while the getting is still good enough. As Dean's plan to test his wife's faithfulness (or lack thereof) is put into motion with the help of a gigolo, Joel tries to avoid being scammed by Cindy and still considers her for an affair. As his business and personal lives crumble, Joel begins to slip into morally murky territory and he struggles to solve his problems in all of the worst ways.

In many ways, Extract is a pretty standard slapstick/gross-out humor film filled with one-liners and abrupt character turns that are either painful or leave the viewer groaning for how stupidly the character is acting. What brings this particular movie up is that it is actually funny and the caliber of the acting. Joel may be a morally problematic character, but he is well-played by Jason Bateman who manages to do more with the role than simply stare blank-faced and look dumfounded by the changes in circumstance surrounding him. In other words, Bateman delivers a funny performance that is not simply a recapture of his role from Arrested Development.

As well, Extract has a number of funny lines and some great cameos. Following losing a testicle, Step's appearances are often accompanied by his lawyer, Joe. Joe is played by rocker Gene Simmons and his ability to deadpan is surprisingly deft. He plays the lawyer - whose threat menace Reynolds Extract - who represents Step in his workplace accident and his performance raises the caliber of his scene to something more than just a collection of lost balls jokes. Simmons holds his own in a pretty fabulous cast.

Similarly, Mila Kunis and Kristen Wiig once again prove they are more than just hot bodies on screen. Kunis plays Cindy with an understated ruthlessness that make her the ultimate con artist. For sure, Cindy uses sex appeal often to get what she wants, but through the course of Extract, Kunis is required to do more than just look good and she holds that up admirably. Put in some of the film's scenes that include the funniest lines, she remains wonderfully pokerfaced. Similarly, Wiig gives a supporting performance that allows her to use some charm and reveal her great sense of timing to get the most out of some lines that have only mediocre inherent humor.

Even so, writer and director Mike Judge does a good job of translating to screen an offbeat situation told with some deliciously specific writing. So, for example, management at Reynolds Extract seldom knows the actual names of the workers on the floor and so they just call people "dinkus." As the company gets into more dire straits, the fact that Joel and his lieutenant, Brian, do not grow out of this is increasingly funny.

The movie develops the situation more than the characters and some of the characters are more "types" than individuals. Chief among these is Dean, who is more the archetype of the stoner, drug dealer than an individual. He is played by Ben Affleck without much wit and the slack-jawed, half-closed eyes performance is exactly what one expects from this archetype. Similarly, Nathan is the nosy neighbor, Suzie is the unsatisfied wife and Brian is the loyal sidekick. Joel does not so much grow and change throughout the movie as he does watch his dreams slip farther and farther out of his reach.

In addition to being light on characters, because virtually all of the characters are unlikable, the plot seems remarkably simple. We don't honestly care if Joel makes a fortune or loses everything and the saving grace of this uncomplicated movie is that it is short. Extract entertains with verbal humor and a bit of slapstick physical comedy and it does what it is doing quickly. The result is an entertaining movie that makes for an enjoyable evening, even if it is not enduringly great.

For other works with Jason Bateman, please check out my reviews of:
The Change-Up
Horrible Bosses
Paul
The Switch
Couples Retreat
The Invention Of Lying
Hancock
Forgetting Sarah Marshall
Smokin' Aces
Arrested Development

6.5/10

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, 2009 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Max Payne Is NOT Constantine 2!

The Good: Decent enough acting, Decent special effects, Moments of plot/concept
The Bad: Character elements seem predictable, Guts plot for franchise, Misrepresented for what it is.
The Basics: Painted as a very different type action adventure film, Max Payne suffers most of the most predictable conceits of the genre.


There is a certain element of appropriate irony in the fact that just yesterday I was speaking with a friend about previews and what a movie needs as far as a preview goes in order to be all right in my book. The Watchmen preview, for example, told me virtually nothing about the film and made it THE film I most anticipated until it came out. But there are two types of previews I loathe. The first are previews that essentially show the entire movie in the preview. Today, I saw previews for The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button and Rocknrolla that gave me enough information to write a review on them! Seriously. The type of preview that my friend hates are misleading previews, ones that set you up for one type of movie before showing you a completely different one.

The reason I mention that is that after weeks of going to films on the studio's dime, I decided to actually add to my ticket stub collection and go see Max Payne based on the strength of the previews. The previews show a movie that is reminiscent of Constantine (reviewed here!) with soldiers for heaven and hell lining up and doing battle. Say what I will about religious fundamentalism as a political tool, movies with good versus evil duking it out with supernatural aid from divine forces of good and evil can make for entertaining movies. It was only moments before going to the theater to watch Max Payne that I learned that this film was based upon a video game. Considering my last experience with such a film, Silent Hill, one might have thought I would have been more cautious. It's too bad I wasn't. I mention this because Max Payne falls into the latter type of rotten preview, setting the viewer up for a movie quite different from what it was. In fact, I'd swear some of the lines were put into the movie just so they could go in the trailer to paint this out to be a Constantine-type film. It, however, is not.

Max Payne, police detective for New York City's Cold Case Unit, has been thrown under the icy waters of the river and he is sinking, dying, sure to be dredged up in the spring with all the rest of the ordinary human bodies he is sinking toward. One week before he meets his untimely end, Payne is hunting criminals, a druggie named Doug who he has been led to believe has information on the last person responsible for killing his wife three years before. Obsessed with finding the one who got away, Payne has been scouring the City, but Doug comes up empty. This leads Payne to his informant's social gathering where he meets Natasha, whom he takes home. After not getting much from her, she picks his pocket, walks out and is promptly torn into dozens of pieces by who knows what.

Payne's former partner, Alex, finds Max's wallet and reunites with him, quickly finding a link between Natasha's death and the death of Michelle Payne. This discovery quickly costs him his life and Max works to avenge the death of his wife, Natasha and Alex with the help of his father's former partner, BB Hensley, who now works the security division at Aesir Pharmaceuticals. Pursued by the killers and an Internal Affairs officer named Bravura, Max works to avenge their deaths while unraveling what got them all killed, while staying alive himself.

It wasn't long into Max Payne that I had judged this an average action adventure film, a pretty firm five out of ten on the ten point scale. The closing credit sequence of big, dumb gun shots only cemented my feeling about this average flick. What was it about the last fifteen minutes? Well, they pretty much undo the prior hour and a half that preceded it.

Without ruining anything, the opening shots are leading up to Payne's drowning in icy water, so in some way the viewer has something to look forward to from the very beginning. In this sequence, we learn that Payne is just an ordinary man. Payne has no superhuman strengths, no special cunning, no advanced armaments, no powers. He's a human. Flat out. Given that, I was even willing to accept that the virtual army of professional security and paramilitary people who are set upon him all somehow manage to miss, even as he takes on several people with machine guns with only a handgun. I CAN buy into suspension of disbelief and enjoy myself. The problem, though, is that Payne gets tossed into the icy water fifteen minutes before the film ends and everything that follows is just garbage.

Max Payne suffers from a remarkably predictable plot. This is a straightforward revenge story, much like Payback (reviewed here!), save that our anti-hero is a police officer out to right a wrong. At the same time, Payne has to piece together clues as to what led to his wife's death and as far as the structure of the movie goes, I swear screenwriter Beau Thorne simply took all of the scenes from Dark City (reviewed here!) and changed the dialogue to fit this movie. All of the revelations and betrayals seem to come at virtually the identical moments as that vastly superior film (Bumstead is replaced by Mona Sax, Natasha's sister, for anyone who wants to do a comparative analysis).

In addition to being incredibly predictable, Max Payne has all of the obvious reversals one might expect from an action adventure film. The characters who seem his most loyal are, of course, the ones involved in the conspiracy and those who seem most shifty seem to stay on his good side. It's obvious and problematic in its simplicity.

As well, there is a very "video game" sensibility to the movie, though I was fine with that for most of the film. Payne runs around, gets shot at, learns a vital piece of information or gets a new gun before moving on to the next scene and that works. It even works when the massive exposition scene is given to the viewer explaining what is truly going on (it's pretty obvious by that point) and who the "big boss" is. But then, the film turns into something truly inane and guts itself of any credibility.

Actually, much of the premise is flawed from the moment that Natasha enters the film. Natasha, like a slew of the criminal underground characters is tattooed with a pair of wings on her arm (and yes, the tattoo is explained in the course of the movie). What Alex puts together is that her tattoo matches a tattoo on one of the people who killed Michelle Payne (and who Max killed as he tried to leave the house after the crime). We are meant to believe that Max Payne has risked his life and career for the past three years hunting for people related to the murder of his wife and he wouldn't have noticed the connection himself?! I can't say for sure, but one suspects that if one shot one of the people who killed his wife, he would remember what that dead guy on the floor he shot looked like, especially when the tattoo is facing plain sight. Usually, I have a problem with protagonists who are too smart, Max Payne is unbelievably dim when it comes to the events surrounding his wife's murder.

As well, more than any other film I can recall, Max Payne utilizes people off screen talking, usually in the form of shouting insults at Payne. This gets irritating by the third time it happens and it is hard to tell what the point is; the viewer gets that there are not a lot of people who like Payne!

What isn't baffling for its stupidity tends to be telegraphed well in advance. For example, Alex's wife, Christa, slaps Max when he comes to the wake and only someone who is asleep or has never seen a movie like this doesn't see it coming. Virtually every opportunity the film has to be groundbreaking and different, it mortgages. Nowhere is this more true than in the final fifteen minutes when the film sacrifices the dark noir for the potential of a franchise in the Max Payne-universe (don't believe me, stay through the credits for the scene after them!).

That said, Mark Wahlberg does fine as Payne. He is believable angry, even when he is unbelievably able to dodge bullets. Wahlberg has an intensity to him that works well for creating the steely resolve needed to believe in Payne's character. Mila Kunis and Olga Kurylenko are perfectly cast as sisters. Kunis gives a good performance as Mona, though in truth her ruthless mobster character seems less like a stretch than the next natural step from Kunis' character of Jackie on That 70's Show.

This is a pretty obvious action adventure film and the final insult in it comes in the nature of the drug that is seen from when Payne hunts Doug in the first ten minutes. Note to movie writers: The key to making great soldiers is not, in fact, making a soldier with heightened aggression (let's face it, it's not the chess club students who are being most hunted by recruiters), it's making one who can aim a gun and hit their mark more frequently. Sadly, Max Payne's writers miss that sensible concept and gut the principle along with virtually everything else in the movie.

For other works featuring Mila Kunis, please check out my reviews of:
Friends With Benefits
Black Swan
Family Guy Presents: It's A Trap
Date Night
Forgetting Sarah Marshall

5/10

For other movie reviews, please visit my Movie Index Page!

© 2012, 2008 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Justin Timberlake Without Pants, Mila Kunis' Sideboob And Will Gluck Goes 2 For 3 With Friends With Benefits!

The Good: Consistently, laugh-out-loud funny, Wonderful acting, Fun characters
The Bad: Obvious plot arc and character development.
The Basics: Will Gluck and his team successfully turn a contrived idea into a hilarious and fun movie experience with Friends With Benefits!


Last year, my wife and I saw a movie via a preview screening that neither of us was terribly excited about - largely based on months of preview trailers that we felt showed the entire film - and we came out raving about it. It became one of my wife's favorite gifts for the winter holiday when I got her the Blu-Ray and we have watched it several times since, with delight each time. The movie was Easy A (reviewed here!) and with it, director Will Gluck got off my "Ack!" List (a spot he earned with Fired Up!). It was the credibility Gluck earned with Easy A that made me uber-excited that I scored tickets to a screening of his new film Friends With Benefits and that my wife (who had not been feeling well early in the day) rallied her health and was able to accompany me to the screening.

Quite simply, Will Gluck and his team have managed to do it again. Friends With Benefits takes an overly done and cliche idea and recreates it with enough self-referential pokes at the romantic comedy genre to make it all seem fresh and new once again. One of the games I play with movies these days is seeing how the PG-13 film will use the one "fuck" it is allowed by the MPAA. I went into Friends With Benefits without knowing its rating and was quite happy when it exposed itself as an "R-rated" film with multiple "fucks" in the first five minutes. It set me up for a movie that wasn't going to play it safe with language, visuals or concepts. And Gluck and his team delivered!

Friends With Benefits, as hard as it tries, is what it mocks. I'm not talking about how Gluck creates a parody film within the movie - amusingly titled "I Love You, I Love New You" - and comments on the inappropriate use of soundtrack, then uses the same song at the climax of Friends With Benefits; that is obvious parody and a funny joke worth the laugh it gets to the engaged audience. But as much as Gluck and his team mock the romantic comedy cliches, they use them. There is nothing so audaciously new in Friends With Benefits as to surprise moviegoers or make them feel like they have watched anything particularly new. So, Friends With Benefits has a soundtrack that might not telegraph all of the emotions, but it fills a lot of space with noisy music that is distracting or unnecessary. Regardless, viewers come away from Friends With Benefits with the feeling they have seen a higher caliber of romantic comedy than the standard fare.

Friends With Benefits is, as much as it tries to fight or deny it, pretty much the standard "two friends try having sex without complications" romantic comedy. This is a style so prevalent in contemporary cinema that it was done recently with No Strings Attached and with the more dramatic interpretation, Love And Other Drugs (reviewed here!). The fundamental difference was stated eloquently by my wife as we drove home last night. She did not like Love And Other Drugs, (among other reasons) because it started out funny and energetic and became something serious and moody. What I call "character and plot development," she called "bait and switch." What she loved about Friends With Benefits that I enjoyed as well was that it started funny and while it has some obvious heartstring moments in the last third, it never gets so serious as to make one think they are watching anything other than a well-developed comedy.

Dylan is a moderately successful blog operator whose girlfriend breaks up with him at a John Mayer concert right around the same time that Jamie's boyfriend is breaking up with her. Jamie is Dylan's headhunter, hunting for a new editor for GQ, who brings Dylan to New York City to try to seal the deal. With a tour of New York City and the help of a flash mob, Dylan takes the job and moves to the City where Jamie is the only person he truly knows. Hanging out one night, commiserating on their failed relationships, Dylan and Jamie admit to being emotionally unavailable and emotionally damaged and yet desirous of sex, so they make a pact to have sex as friends and not let it become more complicated than that.

Their experiment, predictably, goes quite well and the lack of romantic attachment allows them to be more open and honest with each other than they have been with any of their prior partners, leading to fantastic sex and a pretty solid bedrock for a relationship. So, when Jamie opens up to dating again, Dylan steps back and watches as she dates a pediatric oncologist who appears able to live with Jamie's "five date" (before sex) rule. But when that fizzles, Dylan invites Jamie back to his father's house for the Fourth Of July to heal and the true depth of their feelings comes out, with complications ensuing.

For all the good things about Friends With Benefits, someone ought to say it: Will Gluck, you are a pussy! Friends With Benefits has major plot developments around the Fourth Of July. Why didn't you release this to compete with Transformers Dark Of The Moon (reviewed here!)?! Seriously! Pussy! (FYI, I haven't taken leave of my senses here: Gluck and Screen Gems could have offered moviegoers a real option against the banal special effects film that won the 4th of July weekend and this is actually a reference to Friends With Benefits wherein Jamie gets Dylan to do something uncharacteristic simply by calling him a pussy.) Sure, Friends With Benefits might have competed against Justin Timberlake's other current outing, Bad Teacher, but this was a vastly superior movie (and it could remain that if it is not spoiled with more trailers that show more of the movie!). Regardless, writers Keith Merryman, David A. Newman and the other four writers have made a movie which might top ID4 for best 4th of July film.

What works best for Friends With Benefits is that it is funny and well-acted. The humor is smart and when it is crude, it is not upsettingly crude. So, for example, the teaser that sets up Dylan and Kayla's breakup (and features Emma Stone in a delightful bit role!) and Jamie and her boyfriend's breakup outside Pretty Woman is very funny and owes huge points to the film's editor who cut the scenes together to be exceptionally well-timed and funny. The humor continues with the initial agreement which has Dylan pitching the arrangement because "sex should be like tennis." The movie gets a comedy boost when Patricia Clarkson enters the film as Jamie's crazy mother, Lorna, and keeps the humor original with Dylan trying to urinate with an erection. Gluck is smart enough to keep that scene surprisingly classy by not making it explicit and the humor there works.

Gluck falls back on some of his successful conceits from Easy A, where he mocked "Pocket Full Of Sunshine," by lampooning Chris Cross's "Jump" and calling back to "Closing Time" a lot. The level of diction in Friends With Benefits is better than in most romantic comedies. In fact, the only comedic element that did not work quite so well was Dylan's problems with math, which becomes a running joke after the trip to Los Angeles, and could have been hinted at better earlier on in the movie. Fortunately, Gluck never detonates the joke he planted the seeds for, which would have been a tasteless bombshell that put Dylan and Jamie as siblings (Lorna does not remember Jamie's father and Dylan's Alsheimer's-riddled father mistakes Jamie for someone he once knew).

The acting, in concert with the hilarious writing and wonderful direction, helps Friends With Benefits transcend the stale formula for a romantic comedy that is constantly lampooned in the film and helps it all feel fresh once again. Jason Segal and Rashida Jones have cameos as the stars of "I Love You, I Love New You" within the film (and they get the post-credit scene which is cute enough to stay through the closing credits for). Richard Jenkins lends some dramatic strength to the latter half as Dylan's father and Jenna Elfman is resurrected from wherever she has been since Dharma & Greg to have a decent supporting role as Annie. Patricia Clarkson is more the product of typecasting as she plays yet another sage free spirit as Lorna, though Woody Harrelson plays Dylan's homosexual sports editor with genius comic timing. Harrelson's role is arguably to make the one pejorative use of the word "gay" less-offensive (Dylan's nephew's comment about "gay" Harry Potter is slightly sour), but Harrelson rules the bit role.

Mila Kunis veers away from the overly dramatic to make Jamie truly funny. Kunis has the dramatic gravitas to easily pull off the moments where Jamie must appear hurt or vulnerable, but in Friends With Benefits, viewers are reminded how she got where she is today. She is funny, she has a great sense of comic timing and it is hard not to smile when she tries to be charming. Her flirting with Justin Timberlake reads as very real and there is a spontaneous spark that comes frequently to her eyes that tells the viewer not only is Kunis having fun, but Jamie is as well. And for those for whom such things are important, Kunis's sex scenes with Timberlake are steamy, but the most one will see is a butt shot and sideboob.

Which, of course, is more than we see from Timberlake. Of course, we see his ass and his chest, but this is not Timberlake's full frontal attempt to get every fan who ever loved N'Sync to the theaters. Timberlake, for his part, has successfully reinvented himself as a real actor now. Between this and Bad Teacher it is clear that he is a very funny guy and Will Gluck plays off his innate sense of comic timing wonderfully. But what sold me on Timberlake were the two serious moments. When Dylan realizes how bad off his father's health is and when he understands just what he had with Jamie and how important that relationship is, he emotes with his eyes such a profound sense of loss and grief that the viewer is unable to resist empathizing with him.

Ultimately, Friends With Benefits is a reinvention of the romantic comedy for the stale "friends having sex" plotline. Random elements like the Shaun White cameo which initially seemed weird and disturbing work because they are called back to and developed and while I'm not much of a fan of the whole "flash mob" fad, even that works. Having seen the film twice now, this comedy holds up remarkably well over multiple viewings making it great for multiple dates or sharing it with friends. For adults looking for something truly funny this summer, Friends With Benefits is the movie we've been waiting for, even if Will Gluck was too much of a pussy to release it to compete with the big guns of Summer Blockbuster Season.

For other films with Justin Timberlake, please check out my reviews of:
Bad Teacher
The Social Network
Southland Tales


8.5/10

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

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

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