Mr. Popper’s Penguins

Posted on June 16, 2011 at 6:25 pm

It used to be that a comedian who wanted to be in movies had to make an armed services comedy. Now, we stick them in domestic stories about daddies who need to learn that the family is more important than the office. Steve Martin, Eddie Murphy, Tim Allen, Robin Williams, and Jim Carrey have all been, there, some more than once. Other performers take on movies through this rite of passage: look at Ice Cube’s “Are We There Yet?” and “Are We Done Yet?” or The Rock in “The Game Plan” or “The Tooth Fairy,” or Hulk Hogan in “Mr. Nanny” or Vin Diesel in “The Pacifier.”

Actually, don’t.

As rigidly structured as a limerick, these films also require: crotch hits, potty humor, grumpy bosses, and Daddy working through his own issues before finding that what really matters is family. Sometimes, as happens here, they appropriate the title of a beloved book and then jettison just about everything else about it. I’m still hoping for an authentic version of the real-life story “Cheaper by the Dozen,” updating the classic movie version with Clifton Webb. The charming book by Richard and Florence Atwater merits more than a homeopathic speck of a relationship to a movie someday as well.

The book, written in 1938, is the story of a decorator who dreams of adventure and is sent a penguin by an antarctic explorer. In the movie, Jim Carrey plays the son of an explorer who was never home when he was growing up. Now in his 40’s, he is the divorced father of two who works so hard for a company that buys beautiful old buildings and tears them down to build new ones that he misses a lot of soccer games and dance recitals. He very much wants to be a name partner in the firm. If he can make one more big acquisition for the company, it’s his. The only privately-held space in Central Park is the elegant old restaurant, Tavern on the Green. In real life, it is now closed, but in the movie it is owned by redoutable dowager Mrs. Van Grundy (Angela Lansbury).

And then, a crate is delivered. Mr. Popper’s father has died and he has inherited a penguin, soon followed by five more. Popper tries desperately to get rid of the penguin until his son Billy (Maxwell Perry Cotton) sees them and thinks they are his birthday present. So Popper keeps them as a way to connect to his kids, even though his building does not allow pets and a zealous zookeeper wants to take them away. Various forms of chaos disrupt Popper’s life, interfering with his efforts to persuade Mrs. Van Grundy to sell and the no-pets rule in his apartment building but enhancing his communications with his children and ex-wife. As he scrambles to create an optimal environment for the penguins, his home starts to look more and more like the South Pole. And when three of the penguins lay eggs, it brings out his protective father instincts.

Carrey gets to make faces and do some improvising, which is undeniably fun, and there are some clever lines. Popper’s son describes his upset middle-school sister as “95 pounds of C4 explosives on a hair trigger. You’re in the hurt locker now.” Carrey has some fun with the sillier situations and the lovely Madeline Carroll (Popper’s daughter) is a welcome presence. The book that inspired it is warmly remembered more than 70 years later. The movie may not be remembered by the time you get home.

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Green Lantern

Posted on June 16, 2011 at 9:52 am

Let’s get right down to it with the superhero essentials checklist. Cool powers? Check. Interesting villain? Check. Interesting girlfriend? Half a check. Aliens? Check. Fancy gala party? I’m not sure why that appears to be a crucial part of every superhero movie, but it’s here. Working through some angsty parental issues? Check. Special effects and action sequences? Maybe three-quarters of a check. Does the superhero outfit avoid looking silly? Half a check. Is the 3D worth it? No check.

Another month, another superhero, this time DC (home of Batman and Superman), not Marvel (home of the Fantastic Four, Iron Man, and Thor). Hal Jordan (a very buff Ryan Reynolds) is an irresponsible but irresistible rogue and a test pilot for a company that makes planes for the military. He has an on- and off relationship with the test pilot/executive daughter of the head of the company, Carol Ferris (“Gossip Girl’s” Blake Lively). When four members of the intergalactic force for peace and justice — think outer space Seal Team 6 — are killed by a creature who looks like a spider made of smoke, their special green lantern rings seek out the successors. For the first time, a human is invited to join the Green Lanterns. The alien dies, telling Hal only that he has to use the ring and lantern and say the oath. Hal tries the only oaths he can think of — pledge of allegiance, He-Man — before the ring and lantern lights up and he gets it right: “In brightest day, in blackest night, No evil shall escape my sight. Let those who worship evil’s might, Beware my power… Green Lantern’s light!“

It is fun as long as you don’t think too hard. There’s so much nattering about Will versus Fear that it could have been written by Ayn Rand and directed by Leni Riefenstahl. (Carol would be right at home with Dominique and Dagny.) The Lanterns’ power includes calling into being anything they can imagine, which undercuts any peril and dramatic tension in the big confrontations. It makes the struggle internal, one of strategic imagination and determination, not the best idea for a big special effects film. The bad guys include a nerdy scientist whose exposure to the evil smoke-spider turns him into a misshapen, anger- and jealousy-driven madman, and the smoke-spider, whose surprising connection to the Lanterns makes him even more dangerous. But it seems unfocused, overly fussy and most likely re-cut following a poor reaction to an earlier version — characters like Hal’s nephew and best friend are introduced and then disappear and Angela Bassett barely appears as a scientist. Mark Strong is a skeptical alien with a ridiculous mustache and even more ridiculous dialog, and the elders look like first-draft Yodas. And everybody has father issues. What, no one has a father who’s present and supportive? Aren’t there any mothers left? Reynolds does fine as Hal but Lively never lives up to her name, swanning around in elegant sheaths and high heels but without any of the wit or energy of Gwenyth Paltrow’s Pepper Potts. The credit sequence ends with a sneak peek at the villain for the next episode. Let’s hope they have the will to call up something a little more fearless next time.

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Lightning McQueen — in Legos!

Posted on June 15, 2011 at 12:00 am

It took 2000 hours and almost a quarter million bricks!

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This Week on DVD

Posted on June 14, 2011 at 3:19 pm

DVD pick of the week: The Grace Card This unpretentious but sincere film about the power of anger and the greater power of forgiveness has quiet power, and its final scenes are moving and inspirational.

Also on DVD this week:

Battle: Los Angeles Destined to be remembered primarily as yet another step toward closing the gap between games and movies, the essence of “Battle: Lost Angeles” is a lot of boom-boom and a bunch of “ooo-rah.” But the action scenes in this military vs. alien invaders saga are fun and the one-the-ground and on-the-fly portrayal of operational strategy and honor is stirring.

Hall Pass A vile mess that wastes the talents of everyone involved, this is an un-funny comedy about married men who want to be cool and single again, just for a week.

Red Riding Hood Oh, Grandmother, what a big, bad movie you have. I invoked my famous “Gothika Rule” on this one.

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Interview: Don McGlynn of Gospel Documentary ‘Rejoice and Shout’

Posted on June 14, 2011 at 10:54 am

Don McGlynn is the director of a raise-the-roof documentary about gospel music fittingly called “Rejoice and Shout.” It is a thrilling compendium filled with history but more importantly, filled with music. The people are wonderful and McGlynn gives us full performances of the gorgeous music of the past and the present.

How did you find those amazing archival clips?

It was an enormous job finding it. I’ve been working with my producer partner Joe Lauro, who has been gathering this stuff for 20 years. It was daunting to go through all the material but even the middling clips were so inspiring. And the ones we used I’m very thrilled with. There were a number of gospel shows around the country. We got a lot from “TV Gospel Time” and some from “Jubilee,” a show out of Chicago. Joe is so determined and so interested that he wanted to see everything. And that means we got to use clips that had never been exhibited. We think of the beginning of movies with sound as “The Jazz Singer” in 1927. But we found one clip that pre-dates that, from 1922. And after “The Jazz Singer” all these newsreel crews went out to make sound films. About 30 minutes into our movie we have five or six clips of footage almost 90 years old that had never been edited before. There was a lot of archeology going on!

One of my favorite parts of the movie was tracing the way that gospel and pop and rock music influenced and enriched each other, sometimes uneasily.

One of the great things about gospel music was the way they took the whole concept of the barbershop quartet and twisted it and changed it around so much that it became this very elaborate, fascinating kind of music. As much as I love all of the quartets we have in the film, like the Dixie Hummingbirds and the Golden Gate Quartet, I think it’s fair to say they’re kind of unthinkable without the Mills Brothers. There’s this back and forth feeding of gospel into pop and vice versa.

And you show the influence gospel and folk had with each other, with Bob Dylan a big fan of the Staples Singers and performing with them.

It’s conscious music and it was a good time for both of them to sing those songs. That was a great meeting point. I’m a Minnesotan, too, an Irish Catholic boy, up there isolated in the frozen north, so it is heartening to me that Dylan, also from Minnesota, was listening to the Staples. We feel so isolated but that doesn’t mean we can’t find the world somehow.

How would you describe the importance of gospel in the African-American churches?

When you go to a Baptist church, it’s very similar to my experience in a Catholic church, but there’s more going on. You have the sermons, and the collections, and music. In gospel you feel that there’s this commitment for the daily experience. People say, “I go to church at nine and get home about six.” And it’s never boring! It’s a blast. It’s also like the newspaper of the community, to find out what is going on with everyone, what this meant morally and ethically, of course frequently referring back to the Bible.

Does the experience of singing gospel music bring the singer closer to God? Is it a form of prayer?

That’s maybe the point of my movie. In order for these people to sing so beautifully, having this religious and emotional and spiritual connection to the music brings it really to life. It’s inescapable. There were two things that were important to me. One was that this is a music movie so let’s have full performances of the songs. And these people are really religious, so let’s talk about what God and church mean to them. They’re artists who are expressing themselves because of how they feel about these subjects.

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