Half-Assed Movie Reviews

October 26, 2009:  Where the Wild Things Are

I started off this viewing on the wrong foot right from the start, somehow not having been able to find the time to re-read the source material, a 40-page picture book containing about 10 sentences of text.  Wouldn’t you say that it’s kind of important to go in with that information fresh in my mind, considering that a major point of discussion about this film has been about how such a brief story could be expanded to feature length?

Where the Wild Things Are is a much-loved book written and illustrated by Maurice Sendak, published in 1963.  It has been popular with children of all generations since then, and the buzz about this film adaptation was similar to what we saw for the Lord of the Rings films, classic books which were often considered to be “unfilmable”.  I grew up with the book and I certainly recall liking it but don’t remember loving it.  Upon revisiting the story, I can understand the subtext and how the story may appeal more to certain kids than others.  I saw the film with my wife, who is one of the longtime fans of the book who loved it as a child.

So what is this story about, and does it expand to be a complete movie?  Well, the core of the story concerns a young boy (Max) who, after acting up and being sent to his room, disappears into a fantasy land full of monsters and eventually becomes their king, only to eventually realize that he needs to return home, at which point he finds that his home life isn’t so bad as he had thought it was.  The setup and the coda are interpreted from a mere few pages in the book to form a perfectly reasonable story beginning and conclusion.  Where the meat of the film comes from, and where the bulk of the new material originates, is during the time Max spends in the land of the wild things.  The creatures are expanded to speaking parts which represent different parts of Max’s psyche and his different emotions, which was done entirely through their facial expressions in the book.

I respect the approach taken here, but for me this really didn’t expand to feature length in an engaging way.  I can certainly see how it would appeal to many fans of the book as an inventive reimagining of the story, but it turned out to be one of the times when I find myself wondering whether there would be a market for 60 or 70 minute films, permitting stories to be told which didn’t necessarily require filler to get up to the accepted minimum running time.  Admittedly the film has been growing on me since I saw it, but I don’t find myself eager to watch it again.  The choice to go with a live-action technique, with actors in big suits and CG only used for the wild things’ faces, is a good one, lending weight to the body language of the characters and their personalities to supplement the solid voice work by the likes of James Gandolfini, Chris Cooper and Paul Dano.  This also permitted the cinematography to be deliberately bleak and muted, using natural light, in a way that’s impossible to achieve with animation without also looking stylized.  The only major complaint I have about the visuals would be certain movements of the wild things, particularly the action of jumping, which looks worse than the worst wire-fighting scenes from martial arts movies of the past decade, despite the claims of one reviewer about the “balletic grace” with which the puppets moved.

I wouldn’t be doing my job as a moviegoer who is obsessed with Catherine Keener if I didn’t mention that she is excellent as always, although she doesn’t have much to do here.  Spike Jonze directed Where the Wild Things Are, and he’s an excellent choice for this, having previously mastered the fantastical in Being John Malkovich and Adaptation, the former of which also co-starred Keener.

When we come right down to it, Where the Wild Things Are certainly did make me think, and provides excellent fodder for discussion.  In considering my current reaction to the story compared with how I received the story as a child and how others may have seen it differently, I was forced to realize that I’m not even an authority on what I personally used to think as a kid, much less what anyone else thinks or thought.  I guess I’m OK with that, and I do thank the movie for making me consider that.

Thoughtful adaptation of a children’s classic.

October 23, 2009:  The Invention of Lying

The Invention of Lying had a moderately large advertising campaign, playing off the sometimes-elusive popularity of Ricky Gervais, and leveraging the faces and names of co-stars Jennifer Garner and Rob Lowe.  It was heartening for me as well to see Louis CK also featured on the posters, since he’s one of my favourite stand-up comedians and it’s good to see him making it bigger, even though he looks like a complete mess in the posters.  Gervais hoped to do better here than he did with Ghost Town, and it seems that he did.

This film is the very definition of high-concept.  People are simply unable to tell lies, and always tell the truth.  Where would that lead?  And then, when one man somehow suddenly gains the ability to lie, what powers and what curses will he experience?

The first 1/4 or so of the movie explores and establishes, in an episodic fashion, this alternate reality in which people cannot lie.  Men and women on dates plainly state what they are really thinking about each other and about their own lives.  People in the workplace are brutally honest about what they think of their co-workers.  People on the street comment to each other, mostly disparagingly.  Gervais works as a writer in the movie industry, and in a brilliant extension of the concept, movies are all non-fiction celebrity readings of stories of history (since nobody can make up fictional characters or stories, since those would be lies.  Get it?  I am kicking myself for not noticing whether or not there was any artwork on the walls).  Then one day, Gervais suddenly gains the ability to lie, and of course immediate experimentation leads to free money and easy opportunities for sex.  This first part of the movie plays out really well.

After that, though, things started to go off the rails for me.  I think the core issue is that the idea is really an interesting one to pursue, but it suspends belief too much.  We see people walking around in a world which, aside from the lack of lying, is materially otherwise entirely familiar – the same cars, homes, offices, clothes, etc.  If people couldn’t lie, could this parallel world really be so similar to the one we know?  Could language even be as we know it?  The movie stumbles over this point a bit when Gervais realizes there isn’t a word for what he is doing.  How would businesses run?  How could things not be communist?  How would crimes work – if people can’t even tell lies, it doesn’t seem that they could steal (the film includes a humorous flashback of a home burglary gone wrong due to honesty, so we know the writers have at least considered this).

Eventually the movie turns to the topic of religion, which is a logical direction and one in which I’m glad it didn’t pull its punches.  How can Gervais not be considered an all-knowing God when he has a power that no other human does?  Some of the nonsensical points around religion and faith are laid bare in this strongest part of the movie, a fascinating study of the “man in the sky” and the whole discussion of how he does everything, good and bad, and how that logic doesn’t always add up.  Of course, we eventually have to come back around to the core romance story, so things get back on track and Gervais gets the girl, as you knew he had to from the time of their disastrous first date which opens the movie.

I can normally get a bit tired of Gervais’ antics and mannerisms, but it’s mostly not too out of place here considering that the whole movie is completely unrealistic.  Cameos and supporting roles by lots of comic actors make every new scene a treat, including the likes of Jonah Hill, Louis CK, Martin Starr (from the Judd Apatow universe), Tina Fey, John Hodgman from The Daily Show, Christopher Guest, Jeffrey Tambor, Jason Bateman (I’m on a bit of a Bateman kick lately), and heavyweights and sometime comic actors Edward Norton and Philip Seymour Hoffman.

I think I would have to recommend The Invention of Lying, even though it really does have some big holes in it, because it’s a worthwhile concept to explore and many of those holes would be very difficult to close.

Another high concept comedy for us.

October 16, 2009:  Couples Retreat

Just what am I looking for?  Stupid characters behaving stupidly?  Smart characters behaving stupidly?  Stupid people who somehow become smart?  When I see a mindless comedy, I’m expecting an engaging and original story idea, characters who are relatable but not clichéd, jokes flying fast and furious but not so quickly that it feels forced, and growth in the characters despite the fact that it means they discover and fix in a matter of days what has been dragging down their lives for years.

Couples Retreat, on the surface, would be entirely comparable to the blockbuster comedy The Hangover which was released earlier this year.  So why did I hate The Hangover despite its near-80% freshness rating at RottenTomatoes, but enjoy Couples Retreat despite its 12% fresh (i.e. rotten) rating?  This review will dance around that question, but I really can’t answer it.  They are both pandering crap, not to say that that’s necessarily bad, but it’s an inauspicious start.

We have four couples, one of which (the control freaks who have a Powerpoint presentation for everything) is trying to get pregnant and struggling and it’s affecting their marriage.  They want to go to a renowned tropical couples retreat with fun and sun and therapy, to reconnect.  It’s pricey, but if all four couples join in, there’s a great discount.  Of course nobody thinks this can fit into their busy lives, but eventually they find themselves all on a plane and heading for Eden.

Once at the resort, the couples loosen up and start to enjoy the amenities, until realizing that the couples therapy they were told was optional is in fact quite mandatory, and early in the morning to boot.  But they play along.  The therapy sessions get to the root of the couples’ problems very quickly.  Jason Bateman and Kristen Bell as the control freaks are getting too wound up to pay attention to what each other wants.  Jon Favreau and Kristin Davis are high school sweethearts frustrated at never having grown past that stage, and cheating on each other.  Faizon Love is newly separated from his wife and at the retreat with his new barely-20 girlfriend, trying to enjoy the trip but finding himself exhausted by the partying antics of his much younger lady friend.  And Vince Vaughn and Malin Akerman are the classic couple caught up in life, with kids and jobs and no time, who never even got to go on their honeymoon.  The therapy sessions are simplistic but honest, and refreshingly brief since they could have easily overstayed their welcome.

Bateman has a bit of a breakdown, Bell disappears to the other side of the resort (the singles side!), and the women and the men are split up as the men try to retrieve/rescue their wives.  This stress and some soul-searching result in the reuniting of all of the couples, including Faizon Love’s wife, who has come down to the resort to chase after him.  Everyone ends up happy.

I felt that two of the reunions were believable, and two simply weren’t, which was the major misstep for this movie.  The obvious age discrepancy in some of the couples was also distracting.  It seemed that the women were generally much younger than the men.  Checking the ages of the actors themselves, things weren’t quite as outrageous as I had feared, but still, Akerman at 31 and Vaughn at 39 don’t look like a couple who have weathered years and years together, and Bateman at 40 and Bell at 29 show Hollywood’s matching up of the stars of the day, as long as the men are well-established and popular and the women are good-looking and young.

I liked Couples Retreat despite myself.  Vaughn and Favreau, who have great chemistry and have been buddies for a long time, add a lot with their scenes (I saw a review declaring them to be the most believable couple in the movie).  Ken Jeong and John Michael Higgins have juicy little roles as therapists which suit them perfectly.  Jean Reno, as the brain behind the Eden resort and couples therapy, brings weight to the high-concept plot in the way that a well-respected older actor often does in these silly comedies.  Mind you, throughout the film the characters are mostly clichés but it fortunately doesn’t try to portray them as anything else.  The PG-13 rating limits the comedy to a certain extent but also forces it to try to use innuendo and real jokes instead of copping out with gross-out or hyper-sexual gags and language, in contrast with The Hangover, which fully embraced its R-rating.  What can I say about Couples Retreat?  I certainly can’t recommend it in good conscience, but it was far better than I was expecting and a huge winner for me compared with the much more popular The Hangover.  See this if you’re a completist on any of the big players, but otherwise you could use your time more wisely.

Unchallenging comedy fills the time nicely.

September 30, 2009:  The Boys are Back

It’s been a while since I saw The Boys are Back, and I can’t figure out whether my mood on that particular evening or the quality of the movie itself is leading to my diminishing opinion of the film in the weeks that have gone by.  Clive Owen plays a man who left his wife and child in England to move to Australia with another woman who was pregnant with his child.  This idyllic new life down under is shattered a decade later by her death, leaving Owen trying to deal with being a single parent to his younger son and also reconnecting with his older son.  There’s lots of up and down in the flow of events, with the dead wife’s parents living nearby and trying to bring stability to their grandchild’s life, and Owen trying to re-establish his career after taking some time off to deal with his loss.

There are great visuals in the film, as one might expect from the rural Australian vistas.  The simple acoustic guitar soundtrack is appropriate.  Ultimately, The Boys are Back seems to deliver what I want, but it’s not really satisfying and I don’t know that I could call it good.  Some awkward genre techniques get in the way of the flow (introducing the love interest with an obvious close-up, knowing exactly when the plot-pivotal disaster is going to happen to lead into the final act), and overall it seemed manipulative and kind of formulaic.  I would have preferred not to be lured to the brink the way I was, even though we see the right resolution in the end.  This is a fresh set of ideas to explore, focusing on the particulars of this family dynamic and this father’s approach to discipline by treating his children as mature and responsible contributors, when really they are young children.

Part of the trouble I had may have been that I found it difficult to believe Clive Owen as a desperate and ineffective father, because as an actor he projects such a forceful energy suggesting that he knows exactly what to do to bring things under control.  But maybe that’s the point – that the confident attitude and resourcefulness still don’t necessarily to help with raising children.

This didn’t really connect with me.

September 17, 2009:  The Unloved

British access and two-time Oscar-nominee Samantha Morton hides suffering beneath the surface.  As a child, she spent several years in foster homes and group homes for children, and perhaps that informs some of the intensity she brings to her roles.  Now she’s using her clout as a celebrity to bring attention to the often sad lives lived by these anchorless children.  The Unloved is a film created for television broadcast in the UK, which I saw at the Toronto International Film Festival.  Television broadcast rather than theatrical distribution is a deliberate choice in order to bring the film closer to the children in foster care, so that they may get an opportunity to see their story portrayed without needing to get out to the cinema.

The story centres around Lucy, an 11-year-old girl who lives with her father.  She is sent to a group home after being beaten by her father.  Her mother left them years ago, evidently unable to deal with the burden of parenthood.  Lucy is lonely and wants her parents, even though a brief visit with her father is inevitably clouded by the memory of the recent violence.  At the group home, there is loud and boisterous action all the time, and eventually the bad influences rub off on Lucy as the 16-year-old Lauren, with whom she shares a room, teaches her how to shoplift.

Molly Windsor, as Lucy, turns in a tremendous performance, emotionless much of the time as you might expect from a quiet child forced into this madhouse of type-A troublemakers.  We see how thankless the job is for counselors as well as staff members at the house, tied up in red tape and without any real guidance or long-term stake in what happens.  In a scene in which Lucy’s case is reviewed, the adults talk about what is to be done with her, as if she’s not sitting right there in the room next to them, and nobody is willing to provide an answer to her one simple question – why can’t she live with her Mom?

Lucy eventually takes matters into her own hands, and goes to see her mother.  An awkward visit makes it clear that her mother loves her and doesn’t want to push her away, but also plainly indicates that her mother can’t deal with her.  The unresolved ending, with Lucy on the bus leaving her mother’s house, is appropriate to the uncertain life paths of these poor children.

What Samantha Morton has done here is admirable, and clearly a work of passion.  I hope that it finds its intended audience, and Morton’s inspirational story helps some of the disadvantaged children of the world to realize that they can rise above their unfair situations.

Gritty and touching public service announcement.