Veronica Mars

Posted on March 13, 2014 at 6:00 pm

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Lowest Recommended Age:	High School
MPAA Rating:	Rated PG-13 for sexuality including references, drug content, violence and some strong language
Profanity:	Some strong language
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Drinking, references to teen drinking and drug use and drug dealing
Violence/ Scariness:	Murders and attempted murders, guns, car crash, peril and scary surprises
Diversity Issues:	Diverse characters
Date Released to Theaters:	March 14, 2014
Date Released to DVD:	May 5, 2014
Amazon.com ASIN:	B00HEQOAQ8

NOTE: I can’t pretend any objectivity here — I am a fan of the television series, a Kickstarter supporter of the film, and a friend of one of the producers. I think I would have been capable of writing a bad review if the film was a disappointment, but thankfully it was even better than I hoped. With that caveat, on to the review:

“Veronica Mars” manages the near-impossible in exceeding the hopes of three different audiences: passionate fans of the three-year television series about a teen-aged detective who wanted more of the same, passionate fans of the television series who wanted to see what happened when the characters grew up, and the much bigger group — people who had never seen the series and did not even remember that there was one.

Writer/director Rob Thomas created the Veronica Mars television series, starring Kristen Bell (“Frozen”) as a teenager whose father was the sheriff of Neptune, California, until he was pushed out of office by a corrupt alliance between government and the local business. He became a private investigator, and Veronica began investigating, too, from the murder of her best friend and a school bus crash to hectoring and blackmail via social media. Like its better-known contemporary “Buffy,” the lead character was a smart, tough, capable teenaged girl coping with the intensity of adolescent traumas externalized as major, life-threatening events, all approached with equal resolve, equanimity, steadfast friends, a love triangle, and quippy dialogue. And it has a surprisingly sharp and astute portrayal of social and economic divisions. A large part of the appeal of the series was in watching Bell deliver a continuous stream of mots juste, with a “Gilmore Girls” depth of immersion in pop culture and understated wit. Fans included Stephen King, who described the series as, “Nancy Drew meets Philip Marlowe, and the result is pure nitro. Why is Veronica Mars so good? It bears little resemblance to life as I know it, but I can’t take my eyes off the damn thing.” A Kickstarter campaign for this film intended to raise $2 million raised $5 million and the results are likely to resonate throughout Hollywood, creating a powerful alternative to the current system for greenlighting film projects.

A two-minute recap brings us up to date. Veronica now lives in New York, a recent law school graduate, living happily with Piz (Chris Lowell), one of her love interests back on the show, who has moved on from a high school radio job to working at NPR (“This American Life’s” Ira Glass shows up for one of several star cameos). She is interviewing at prestigious New York law firms and happy to be creating a new life for herself. And then she is called back to Neptune. Her other former love interest, Logan (Jason Dohring) is suspected of murdering his girlfriend, their high school classmate, who had become a pop star. She promises Piz she will just go back long enough to get Logan a lawyer, but keeps extending her stay as she gets caught up, first in finding that “plausible alternative” to present to the jury, and then in finding out who really did it.

The mystery is absorbing, but it is the depth of characters and richness of the relationships that makes this movie so effective. Bell knows this character so well and inhabits her so fully that it lends depth to the bigger mystery — who will Veronica decide to be? Series co-stars like Enrico Colantoni as Veronica’s father, Tina Majorino and Francis Capra as old friends, and Ryan Hansen and Ken Marino as old frenemies are stand-outs, there are quick cameos from Bell’s real-life husband Dax Shepard and Justin Long, and James Franco contributes a very funny meta-moment as himself (stay past the credits for more). But the star here is Thomas, who has a sure hand in blending the drama, mystery, romance, and wit. Fifteen minutes in, I was a marshmallow.

Parents should know that this film includes brutal murders and attempted murders, guns, drowning, car crashes, some scary surprises and disturbing images, references to teen partying including drugs, sexual references and situation, and some strong and crude language.

Family discussion: Which character changed the most in ten years? What television series would you like to see brought back via Kickstarter?

If you like this, try: the “Veronica Mars” television series and the classic “Thin Man” movies

Mr. Peabody & Sherman

Posted on March 6, 2014 at 6:00 pm

Jay Ward’s irresistibly daffy cartoons of the early 1960’s were charming and witty, with a post-modern meta wink at the fourth wall, wacky puns, and jokes that kids would suddenly remember and understand years later. This reboot is smarmy, overblown, dumbed down, and off-kilter. Who thinks it is a good idea to have a movie for children about time travel begin with a trip to the French revolution and the guillotine?

Cartoonist Ted Key, best known for the Hazel character played by Shirley Booth in the television sitcom, came up with the super-genius dog, Mr. Peabody, inventor of the WABAC machine, and his boy Sherman, for Ward’s “Rocky and Bullwinkle Show.” In each episode, the duo would go back in time and somehow help a historical character solve a problem. In this computer-animated, 3D, full-length feature version, the wit of the original devolves into bathroom humor and slapstick. If the poster slogan is a doggie potty joke (“He makes his mark on history”), it is not a good sign.

As in the original, Mr. Peabody (“Modern Family’s” Ty Burrell) knows everything. He’s a Nobel Prize-winning scientist who advises world leaders and makes a mean cocktail. In one of the movie’s highlights, he is challenged to play musical instruments ranging from a flamenco guitar to a didgeridoo, and performs flawlessly. He has invented a WABAC machine to take Sherman back in time, where they have encountered a cake-loving Marie Antoinette, with Mr. P led to the guillotine, and an unhappy Mona Lisa (Lake Bell), refusing to smile for Leonardo da Vinci (Stanley Tucci).

He has an adopted son, Sherman (Max Charles), who attends a fancy private school, where a girl named Penny (“Modern Family’s” Ariel Winter) gets angry when Sherman corrects her answer about George Washington chopping down the cherry tree, explaining that it never really happened. After a sloppy misuse of the term “sarcastic,” she insults Sherman in the lunchroom, calling him a dog because he has a dog for a father. They get into a fight, and Sherman bites her arm. Mr. Peabody is called to the principal’s office, where Ms. Grunion (Allison Janney), a representative from Child Protective Services, tells him Sherman will be removed from the home if he is not an appropriate parent.

Mr. Peabody invites Penny and her parents and Ms. Grunion over for dinner to straighten things out. Sherman shows Penny the WABAC machine that Mr. Peabody invented to take them back in time, and soon the two kids find themselves in ancient Egypt, where Penny becomes engaged to the young King Tut, until she finds out what that entrails, I mean entails (the bad pun thing is contagious–parents be warned). Soon they are zipping around through history, meeting up with Agamemnon (Patrick Warburton, hilarious as always, despite an Oedipus joke) and soaring over Renaissance Florence in one of da Vinci’s flying machines.

The time travel plot gets bogged down in time-space continuum anomaly mumbo jumbo. Then there are the father-son issues. Mr. Peabody, who wants his son to call him Mr. Peabody, has a problem with the l-word. Ms. Grunion’s blustery bullying and threats to remove Sherman from his home will make some families uncomfortable. It should also make them uncomfortable that the movie appears to portray kidnapping a woman as a romantic gesture that should make her instantly fall in love. Jokes about Oedipus and Bill Clinton are particularly disappointing. Warburton’s dry delivery and some good scenery and action sequences can’t make up for the fact that this movie is a disappointing come-down that completely misses the charm and humor of the original.

Parents should know that this movie has a lot of potty humor, some crude jokes, cartoon-style peril and action including a guillotine and a taser, a character is presumed dead but later shown to have survived, a woman is captured as a romantic gesture, and child protection services challenges an adoption and attempts to remove a child from his home.

Family discussion: If you could go back to any time in history, what would it be? Who would you want to meet? Why was Penny so mean?

If you like this, try: The original series and the other Jay Ward classics like “Rocky and Bullwinkle,” “Fractured Fairy Tales,” and “Dudley Do-right.”

Coming Soon: the Veronica Mars Movie

Posted on February 26, 2014 at 8:22 pm

Want to be Kristen Bell’s date at the premiere? Check this out.

Related Tags:

Based on a television show

The “Veronica Mars” Movie Trailer Looks Great!

Posted on January 3, 2014 at 11:12 am

The Kickstarter-financed update to the beloved television series looks wonderful — a great combination of letting the main character grow up (she’s a lawyer now) but giving her a reason to go home and interact with the characters from her high school days. Well done!

The Lone Ranger

Posted on July 7, 2013 at 11:32 pm

Lowest Recommended Age:	High School
MPAA Rating:	Rated PG-13 for sequences of intense action and violence, and some suggestive material
Profanity:	Some mild language
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Scenes in bar
Violence/ Scariness:	Extensive action-style violence, some graphic, many deaths and injuries
Diversity Issues:	A theme of the movie but some insensitivity to racial differences
Date Released to Theaters:	July 4, 2013
Amazon.com ASIN:	B008JFUOC2

For more than a century the movies have been telling us the story of America through westerns, and each decade gets the version it deserves. We have seen films range from the optimistic, heroic, and racially insensitive movies of the 40’s (“Destry Rides Again,” “My Darling Clementine”) to the more politically metaphoric movies of the cold war era (“High Noon,” “The Ox-Bow Incident”) to the subversive 60’s (“Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid,” “Cat Ballou”), to the bleakness of spaghetti westerns and the Oscar-winning “Unforgiven.”

And now, 110 years after Edwin S. Porter’s “Great Train Robbery” (considered the first movie western), we get an update on the radio show-turned television series-turned forgettable 1981 movie version starring model-almost-turned-actor Klinton Spilsbury and Michael Horse, “The Lone Ranger.” And it is indeed a reflection on the era of Citizens United and squestration. It is the very essence of soulless corporate excess and celebrity self-regard.

The folks behind “Pirates of the Caribbean” have reunited for a reboot of “The Lone Ranger,” but this is more like the overstuffed sequels than the fresh and charming original. Everything is out of balance in this bloated two and a half-hour endurance challenge. The worst part is that pared down to lose 40 minutes or so of filler, this could be a nice little action movie. It has the key ingredients: a story and characters that have stood the test of time, inventive and absorbing action sequences, and talented performers. Unfortunately, it is hard to find any of that in the midst of all of the bombast and overkill and tooooo many cooks.

It is now well known that Depp became a superstar with his performance as Captain Jack Sparrow in the “Pirates” movies, a performance of such quirk and weirdness that it completely freaked out the suits. So of course now, with him as producer, they let him do whatever he wanted for the character of Tonto, including spending the entire movie with his face completely painted and wearing a dead crow on his head, inspired by a picture he saw. This is when the suits should have stepped in. Instead they were enablers, allowing the quirks to become distracting and unpleasant. That is especially true in a completely unnecessary framing story set in 1933, with Depp in old man make-up appearing in an old west display, telling a little kid dressed as the Lone Ranger his story.

Armie Hammer does his best in a thankless role. His John Reid is part James Stewart in “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance” (bookish lawyer who wants to bring Lockeian notions of a civil society to the west), part doofus. He isn’t as smart as Tonto or the villains, which is fine, but he isn’t as smart as his horse, either. He isn’t as smart as the blanket under his saddle, except when he is, or when he is called upon to do crazy stunts like racing the snow-white “spirit horse” across the top of a racing train, shooting his gun as he goes. He is a fine actor with a strong screen presence and he is clearly game. He deserves better.

The many, many references to other movies seem like crutches, not tributes. The many, many anachronisms are sloppy and show contempt for the audience, not meta-commentary. People in 1869 did not say “Let’s do this.” They did not eat hot dogs in buns with ketchup. The “Star Spangled Banner” did not become the national anthem until 1931. There was no such thing as “health code violations” in a bar — or a house of prostitution. And the all-purpose conspiracy that has the military, a hostile takeover, and an outlaw feels desperate and generic. Any commentary on today’s economic and political woes is purely coincidental.

The real commentary on the failures of capitalism is in spending $250 million of the Disney shareholders’ money on this uninspired vanity project.

Parents should know that this film has intense and graphic violence for a PG-13. A villain literally eats the heart of a man he has murdered and there is massive slaughter, with many characters injured and killed. There are prostitutes, a cross-dresser, bathroom humor, some alcohol, and mild language.

Family discussion: Why did Tonto feed the crow? Why was trading so important to him? Read the Lone Ranger’s creed and discuss how it applies to your life.

If you like this, try: “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance,” “Silverado,” “Cat Ballou,” and “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid”