DUE DATE (a review)

DUE DATE (a review)

A comedy teaming up Robert Downey Jr with Zach Galifianakis. Directed by Todd Phillips (The Hangover, Road Trip, Old School).

The story: a man has to get across the country in time for the birth of his child, but he gets kicked off the plane and put on the no fly list nad now has to make a road trip with a biggest pain the butt you can imagine.

Was it good?

Almost. It was okay, and there were a few funny moments, but it never really soared. There are two basic problems: there are long periods without any funny jokes and the goals of the film and emotion just feel weak. This means that you get some laughs, but there are here-and-there laughs, not laugh-after-laugh-after-laugh and while it's a road trip I didn't really care about the destination -- Downey getting to see the birth didn't seem like a big deal and Galifianakis wants to spread his father's ashes, but again it didn't seem like a big deal. There is also a subplot where Downey might suspect his wife of having an affair, but again it comes out of nowhere and doesn't go anywhere.

What the film does have going for it are Downey Jr and Galifianakis, two actors who are incredibly watchable. They can be amusing just sitting around. They help elevate this very uneven work into something watchable.

Honestly, Phillips earlier films -- THE HANGOVER, ROAD TRIP and OLD SCHOOL -- while all stupid, silly films, were better as comedies. I'd recommend any of them over this one, but this is worth a rental.

*** RENTAL ***

Recommend more: like I said the earlier films were better -- OLD SCHOOL, ROAD TRIP and THE HANGOVER all had bigger, better laughs.

TRUE GRIT (2010) (a review)

TRUE GRIT (2010) (a review)

A remake of the classic film starring John Wayne by the Coen Brothers (Fargo, Blood Simple) and stars Jeff Bridges, Matt Damon, Josh Brolin, Hailee Steinfeld and Barry Pepper. It was nominated for 10 Academy Awards (but the big winner that night was KING'S SPEECH).

The story: a young girl's father is killed and she hires a bounty hunter to bring the killer in to justice. However, there is a marshall who wants the criminal brought to justice for different crimes and the girl doesn't want that, she wants the criminal to go to jail for killing her father so now they are competing for that.

Was it good?

Not really.

Look, I know it's the Coen Brothers and Jeff Bridges is always entertaining, and I guess if you like westerns where people mumble a lot, but there's just not much here. It's like a less compelling version of TAKEN where they are trying to grab a criminal instead of his daughter and you really don't care if they suceed or not.

To it's credit, it's very different than TAKEN. TAKEN was an energic action B-movie made cool by Liam Neeson. This movie is slow, has a lot of humor (much from Matt Damon, who seems miscast so you can't tell if you are laughing with him or at him). And the end for me didn't do anything either. It wasn't deep, it wasn't exciting.

The movie just didn't do anything for me.

*** AVOID ***

BATTLE: LOS ANGELES (2011) (a review)

BATTLE: LOS ANGELES (2011) (a review)

A futuristic war story about aliens invading and trying to take over Los Angeles. Well, actually they are trying to take over the world, but the movie focuses on one group of soldiers in los Angeles and their efforts to defeat the aliens. Stars Aaron Eckhart (Batman: Dark Knight), and Michelle Rodriguez (Lost) and directed by Jonathan Liebesman (who has made such brilliant films at Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning and Darkness Falls).

The story: Aliens attack. A marine who is ready to retire is called back into duty to fight them and eventually with a gung ho attitude and a big semper fi, gosh darn it we're able to defeat them!

Was it good?

No. It was one of the dumbest things I've ever seen, and I've sat through four Pauly Shore movies. The problem isn't that the movie is BAD, it's just that the movie is EMPTY.

Let's be honest -- this is basically war porn. And by that I mean it has lots of shooting and fighting and a big pro-military-guns-are-good vibe to it, but nothing else. It's science fiction without any science. It's speculative fiction without any thought. There is nothing special or even specific about the aliens. They are just different and attacking us so let's kill them. There isn't anything special about their weapons or about their tactics or about themselves or anything. Seriously, this is a movie that makes INDEPENDENCE DAY look clever and deep.

And why are they trying to attack us? Water. Not that water has anything to do with the story -- all of which takes place on land -- but I guess we're the only ones who have water that isn't frozen and for a species that has developed advanced weaponry and interstellar travel heating ice (ala the rings of Saturn) is more of a bother than wiping out another species. So, yeah, that was well thought out and makes a lot of sense.

But of course this isn't a movie about thinking...at all...ever...not even in term of the plot which has nothing clever or interesting to it...this is about us being attacked by something evil that we can just shoot and shoot and shoot. And to the movie makers credit the feel of the movie, the man-in-the-foxhole vibe is pretty intense. As much as I hated the movie, I can understand why some other people (especially pro-war gun nuts) would like it. And the movie knows it's audience -- it's all pro-military, pro-America, pro-killing the "others," just like any proper movie aimed at Rupublican NRA fetishists would be.

For me, though, a movie with no thought to it, a movie with nothing to say beyond semper fi, a movie that is only there to blow things up...well, that's a movie I can't recommend.

**** AVOID ****

LITTLE RED RIDING HOOD (2011) (a review)

This is the gothic romance retelling of the classic fairy tale, directed by Katherine Hardwick, the director of TWILIGHT. The idea came from Leonardo DiCaprio (from TITANIC) and is produced by his company, Apian Way. The movie stars Amanda Seyfried, Gary Oldman, Virginia Madsen, Lukas Haas, Max Irons and Julie Christie.

The story: a young girl (Seyfried, because apparently people think she still looks 15) is in love with the boy next door, but she is to be married off to another guy who is rich, and while he's also nice and handsome she just doesn't love him. However, their village is under attack by a werewolf. Now a priest comes to hunt the werewolf who he says is someone who lives in the village (the people call it a werewolf but apparently didn't know werewolves were human most of the time). While the priest hunts the werewolf, the girl struggles to decide which boy she loves as she suspects each might be the wolf.

Was it good?

No.

It's bad. Very bad. Just a mess. I thought it was supposed to be a gothic romance, but there isn't really any story to the romance. She is supposed to marry one guy, but she's in love with someone else and decides to go with him...and that's the middle of the film. For the rest of the movie there's no tension at all. I suppose there's supposed to be some as she suspects that the guy might be the wolf, but it is all handled so poorly that it's hard to care. Not to mention they bounce you from suspect to suspect -- even her mom is a suspect at one point. In fact, the movie is so dominated by the question of who is the wolf that it feels more like a lame mystery than a lame romance.

It's a shame because I love the idea of using Little Red Riding Hood to tell a gothic romance, especially considering girls current obsession with bad boys (and what is the wolf other than ultimate dangerous, feral man?). However, this movie just failed to dig into any of that.

It wasn't romantic. It wasn't scary. The only thing it was is boring.

*** AVOID ***

***

On a message board someone asked:

"What does this (the failur eof the movie) tell us about the next dozen similar projects on the way?Should they pull the plug now?"

My answer:

I'm not sure what you mean by "similar projects."

I wouldn't pull the plug on anything because this. It was just a bad movie. There are few lessons I would take from it.

1) KNOW WHAT THE HELL YOU ARE DOING -- GENRE

I'm actually not sure what they were trying to do in this movie. I thought the idea was to do LRRH as a dark/gothic romance. I love the idea. But this isn't a gothic romance. This isn't a gothic anything, and it's not really a romance anything. Really what it is is a mystery, but the solution to the mystery ***SPOILERS*** is actually her father wanting her to leave with him. That's about as non-romance as you can get. In fact, this movie really is closer to THE WOLFMAN remake than it is to a romance story. Look at TWILIGHT -- you might love it or hate it, but it clearly is a romance story that has attracted millions of fans. IF YOU WANT TO MAKE A ROMANCE, THEN MAKE A ROMANCE.

2) KNOW WHAT THE HELL YOU ARE DOING -- CENTRAL QUESTION

I think almost every story has two central questions, usually an internal and external. One thing you should do is when you think about the movie, the genre, the audience ask yourself is your central questions are compelling AND are the answers compelling. Here the external question seemed to be WHO IS THE WOLF? Now if this is a fairy tale version of SCREAM it would make sense. But part of what made SCREAM work is the way they took a universal girl emotion -- Do I trust my boyfriend enough to give it up to him -- and externalized it to Do you think your boyfriend is a serial killer. There was a wonderful parallel there that the movie exploited beautifully (and which the sequels lacked which is part of why they sucked.)

So what's the parallel for the question of Who is the wolf? I don't know. I guess maybe they were trying to have it parallel her choice of men, but that really never worked. She makes her choice fairly early. You would think they use the idea of does she want a nice guy or a bad boy in some way, but that's not really there either. It's almost like they had her choosing between two guys because it worked in TITANIC, except TITANIC worked because it is basically ROMEO AND JULIET on a boat -- a girl set up to marry a man she doesn't love when she meets another guy and tries to run away with him, but fate itself then begins to seperate them and threaten their lives. LRRH doesn't have anything like that. Not at all.

And what is the answer to that question of Who is the wolf? ***SPOILER*** Well, it's her dad. How the fuck does that make sense? If you are making a romance the answer to the central question is her dad??? WTF?!?!?!?

Again, nothing works.

And that isn't even hitting at what the interior question is, because honestly I'm not sure there is one. At one point there is the struggle between which guy she will be with, bu that is decided so early and so easily that it's hardly a question at all.

3) KNOW WHAT THE HELL YOU ARE DOING -- TROPES

Movies like this that are playing around with pre-existing material, obviously part of the fun is what you do with the familiar to make it fresh and interesting. Here what tropes do they play with? Well, none. They have a nice beat with the "My what big eyes you have..." lines but that's about it. They don't really use anything from the fairy tale -- they don't exploit the concept at all. Compare that to SNOW WHITE AND THE HUNTSMAN -- everything is there, the dwarves, the wicked queen, the prince, the apple, the mining, the magic mirror...often picked up and twisted around in ways that while not being subversive, are at least different and fresh. Here they don't use the story. That means for the people that are intrigued by the idea of a retelling of LRRH they aren't delivering what the audience wants. While I didn't love SW&tH for various reasons, it delivered tons of good stuff for people who want to see the big movie version of their classic fairy tale.

4) KNOW WHAT THE HELL YOU ARE DOING -- THEME

I think we all know that in a lot of ways theme is the appendix of the screen writing world -- basically considered useless until something starts to go horribly wrong. However, theme can have a powerful impact if it's not done in too didactic of a manner. SW&tH used theme in a smart way -- instead of the girl being helpless and having to be saved, he made it about teaching the girl to save herself (a reflection of what fairy tales were meant to do originally). It's a wonderful theme (not especially well executed) that cuts to the core of the story. In LRRH what is the theme? Um...try not to be a wolf? I don't know. Again, a lack of anything -- a clear romance story, a strong central question, a strong internal question, an exploration of the tropes of the original story...make this a mess completely lacking any sort of unity which makes an effective and powerful theme impossible.

There are lots of ways to have made this an effective movie. Like I've said, I love the concept of retelling LRRH as a gothic romance. So why not start by asking what romance you want to play around with? The fact that the movie doesn't have a compelling romance at the center that draws on the tropes and themes of the original story is a strong signal that these people wandered off the path and into the dark woods of bad metaphores where anyone can get lost and holy crap where the am I and how did I get here where it's so dark and there are so many trees? I'm so scared...

There's no reason to think this style of movie can't work -- whether it's reinventing fairy tales or a dark romance. But it's a good example that if you are going to make a movie you need to make clear what kind of movie you want to make and make sure all the element are being exploited and unified.