Men in Black 3

Posted on May 24, 2012 at 6:00 pm

Welcome back, Mr. Smith and Mr. Jones.

The stars and director of one of the most creative and purely entertaining movies of the last 20 years are back for a third that does not match the original but makes up for the mangled sequel. It has some references and tributes to the first two, though it is not overly bothered about consistency with the prior stories either in the details or in the tone. This one seems balanced more toward the sci-fi action and less toward the wonderfully understated comic sensibility that made the first one so refreshing. Nothing in this film reaches the matchless “Now I’m going to have to buy the White Album again” and testing scene moments of the first one. But those black suits still fit and it is still a lot of fun.

High-spirited J (Will Smith) and craggy, taciturn K (Tommy Lee Jones) are agents for a super-secret government organization that handles immigration problems and aliens — not the kind from other countries, the kind from other planets. Some are refugees, some are tourists, but some are here to wipe out all of humanity. The Agency manages all of that and with the help of a flashing “nebulizer” the size of a pen to wipe out the memory of any human unlucky enough to experience an alien encounter.

One of the most dangerous aliens of all is Boris the Animal (“Flight of the Conchords'” Jermaine Clement), captured back in 1969 by K and now locked away in a prison on the moon. As the movie opens, an incomparably luscious lady in a tight, tight dress and high, high stilettos (no special effects needed here: it’s Pussycat Dolls’ Nicole Scherzinger) is bringing him a very frosty cake. As everyone but the prison guards guesses, what is in the cake makes possible Boris’ escape back to earth, where he picks up a time machine and goes back to 1969. He plans to replay his encounter with K so that instead of losing an arm and getting captured he kills K and continues with his destruction of the planet. And so J goes back in time, meets up with the K of 1969 (Josh Brolin, nailing it).

The expected fish-out-of water time travel jokes include technology (the pre-chip nebulizer is big and clunky!) and encounters with the people and events of the era. One of the best jokes in the first movie was the display of monitors that revealed that people like Al Roker, Isaac Mizrahi, director Barry Sonnenfeld, Sylvester Stallone, Dionne Warwick, Newt Gingrich, and Anthony Robbins as aliens. In this version, it seems unimaginatively on-the-nose to include Lady Gaga, but back in 1969 there is a witty twist as one of the likeliest alien suspects of the era is revealed to be an undercover Man in Black instead. Michael Stuhlbarg (“Hugo,” “A Serious Man”) is charming as a sweet-natured alien in a ski cap whose gift and curse is his ability to see every possible outcome. I am sure at least a couple of those possibilities would have been better than this movie’s conclusion, which is muddled and unsatisfying.

Parents should know that this film includes extended sci-fi action violence with chases, explosions, and aliens, some disturbing images, some strong language, and brief suggestive alien sexual references.

Family discussion: How did what J learned about his own past change him? How will K be different and why?

If you like this, try: the first “Men in Black” movie (be sure to try the DVD’s director commentary) and “Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy”

What to Expect When You’re Expecting

Posted on May 17, 2012 at 5:54 pm

No matter how carefully you plan and how diligently you read books like What to Expect When You’re Expecting, pregnancy is guaranteed to be different from whatever you think it is going to be. I wish I could say the same for this movie.

These all-star ensemble cast mash-ups are beginning to feel as thin as the old television show, “Love American Style.” It doesn’t help that there isn’t one pregnancy cliche that is overlooked, no matter how many dozens of movies, sit-coms, and cute greeting cards it has already been done and re-done and re-re-done in before.

There is a celebrity fitness coach and reality dance competition show contestant (Cameron Diaz) who becomes unexpectedly pregnant just a few months into a romance with her dance partner (“Glee’s” Matthew Morrison). There is a loving but financially strapped couple hoping to qualify for an Ethiopian adoption (Jennifer Lopez and Rodrigo Santoro). The husband is nervous about being a father so after his wife offers him a very special sex act to motivate him he starts to spend Saturdays with “the Dudes,” a bunch of stroller-pushing, Snugli-wearing, diaper-bag toting dads whose idea of supporting each other is a Fight Club-style commitment to this decade’s most vapid catchphrase: “no judging.”

Elizabeth Banks plays a woman with ideas about pregnancy so idealized that she has a store devoted to breast-feeding (“The Breast Choice”) and has even written a children’s book about it that is creepier than the infamous Time Magazine cover. She and her dentist husband (Ben Falcone, “Bridesmaids'” Air Marshall Jon) have been trying to get pregnant for years. He is also about to become a big brother. His father is a loudmouth NASCAR champ (Dennis Quaid) married to a decades-younger bride (bright spot Brooklyn Decker) who is pregnant with twins. And there is a pair of rival food truck chefs (Anna Kendrick of “Up in the Air” and Chase Crawford of “Gossip Girl”), whose impulsive encounter apparently did not permit consideration of the importance of birth control.

The movie reads like an extended Caroline Hax “Tell Me About It” column of petty complaints so stunningly self-involved, irresponsible, and selfish that what the movie needs most is a representative of Child Protective Services to take all the babies to better homes. This is one long, loud slog through morning sickness (barfing on live television!), twins, an iPhone app that maps fertility cycles, stretch marks, debates over circumcision, baby names, and combatting the feeling that everyone is doing it better. Serious problems like pregnancy loss and financial concerns are handled as though there is a laugh track and trivial issues like a baby shower are handled as though they actually matter. The big moment comes when Banks’ character confesses to a bunch of future mothers that — insight alert! — “making a human being is really hard.” In yet another tiresome cliche, the clip of her “honest” meltdown goes viral. And then we get to see everyone in labor, making “Exorcist” faces (except for the trophy wife, who sails through labor as she has through the entire pregnancy). “But I typed out my birth plan!” one of them whines cluelessly when it turns out that delivery is not going as she wanted it to. It is another measure of the movie’s disregard of its audience that we go back to the Dudes so they can reverse everything they said the first time. It is not that they have learned anything. The movie is just lazy enough to hope some warm “parenting is wonderful” comments will erase the synthetic waste of celluloid (pixels?) that has gone before. No such luck.

Parents should know that this movie has comic and serious references to reproductive issues including infertility and pregnancy loss and some strong language

Family discussion: Which of these couples will make the best parents? How do you know? Ask your family for some of their pregnancy-related stories.

If you like this, try: “He’s Just Not That Into You” and “Knocked Up”

Related Tags:

Based on a book Comedy Romance

The Dictator

Posted on May 15, 2012 at 6:00 pm

Chutzpah has never been a problem for Sasha Baron Cohen, whose previous films, based on characters he created for television, were semi-documentaries of encounters with ordinary people who did their best to accommodate his outrageously offensive behavior. Whether he was getting a group of people at a rodeo to sing along with an anti-Semitic anthem as an Eastern European journalist in Borat, or get parents of babies to eagerly agree to put their infants in danger in order to be in a movie as the gay fashionista Brüno, Cohen exposed hypocrisy, bigotry, and general cluelessness, as well as the occasional sweetness and tolerance of Americans willing to respect cultural differences. After appearances in mainstream Hollywood films “Sweeney Todd” and “Hugo,” Cohen has returned to his favorite themes with a scripted film, working again with director Larry Charles, in a sharp political satire in the grand tradition of Chaplin’s “The Great Dictator” and Eddie Murphy’s “Coming to America.” Except much dirtier. Chaplin never thought of shooting a scene from inside a woman in the middle of delivering a baby.

Cohen plays Aladeen the totalitarian dictator of North African country called Wadiya, which has caused concern in the rest of the world by developing a nuclear weapon. The development of the weapon as well as just about everything else in the country is obstructed by Aladeen’s egomania and peremptory Queen of Hearts-style ordering of executions for anyone who disagrees with him, bumps into him, or offends him in any way. He has an entire wall of famous Americans he paid to have sex with him, including Megan Fox, Oprah, Lindsay Lohan, and Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Aladeen’s closest aide is Tahir (Sir Ben Kingsley), who is plotting to assassinate Aladeen so that he can take over and sell the country’s lucrative oil rights to Exxon, wealthy Chinese businessman Mr. Lao (Bobby Lee), a heterosexual who enjoys demonstrating his power by making male celebrities have sex with him (leading to a perfectly performed and hilarious cameo by a movie star not known for his sense of humor). Aladeen uses doubles (also played by Cohen) as decoys. After one is killed, he finds another who is something of a simpleton.

Aladeen and his new double go to New York so that he can address the UN about the nuclear weapon. Tahir arranges for the dictator to be captured and killed so that the double can sign the papers establishing Wadiya as a democracy that he needs to sell Mr. Lao and other corporations the oil rights — and become monumentally wealthy. Aladeen is captured and there is a funny scene when he talks his captor (John C. Reilly) out of torturing him with a friendly and knowledgeable discussion of torture implements and techniques. He does not get tortured but he does get shaved and thus unrecognizable as the dictator. So Aladeen ends up working in a Brooklyn collective food market run by Zoe (the ever-effervescent and always-game Anna Faris). Despite his contempt for her politics — and her unshaven underarms — he can’t help being captivated by her. Cohen tempers his fascination with the offensive and making the audience uncomfortable with a little bit of sweetness this time, and the story and the film benefit from it.

Parents should know that this movie has extensive crude and intentionally offensive material including racist and sexist and sexual humor, potty jokes, male nudity, and political humor.

Family discussion: How is Sasha Baron Cohen able to make points through satire that are not possible in serious political commentary and debate? Do you think he goes too far and how do you draw that line?

If you like this try: Chaplin’s “The Great Dictator,” “Coming to America,” and Cohen’s other movies

Related Tags:

Comedy Satire

The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel

Posted on May 3, 2012 at 6:00 pm

A dream team ensemble cast of British acting superstars gives a predictable story of displaced retirees spark and depth in this cozy tale based on the novel These Foolish Things, by Deborah Moggach.

A group of British retirees come to India for one last adventure. Or, they come because they have nowhere else to go. Some have not let themselves think about which it is, or whether it is both. Easy-going Douglas (Bill Nighy) and the perpetually disappointed Jean (“Downton Abbey’s” Penelope Wilton) come because their limited resources cannot cover the life Jean sees for herself. “Would it help if I apologize again?” he asks. “No, but do it anyway,” she replies.

Muriel (Maggie Smith) is appalled by having to leave “proper” Britain to live among foreigners but it is the only way she can get the operation she needs without long delays from the National Health Service. Evelyn (Judi Dench), a recent widow in reduced circumstances, must learn to take care of herself — and finds that she likes it. Madge (Celia Imrie, the “we’re going to need bigger buns” “Calendar Girl”) hopes to find romance. Norman (Ronald Pickup) wants something a bit more carnal. Graham (a courtly Tom Wilkinson) wants to reconnect with his past. They each find The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel “for the elderly and beautiful” in Jaipur via a website. When they arrive, they learn the description of “a luxury development for residents in their golden years” was more aspirational than accurate. “You Photoshopped it!” one new resident accuses. “I offered a vision of the future,” Sonny explains. He tells them that everything will be all right in the end and “if it is not all right, it is not the end.”

The young proprietor is Sonny (“Slumdog Millionaire’s Dev Patel), whose grand plans and grander hopes for the hotel are so vivid he seems a bit surprised when it is pointed out that the the place is falling down and lacking some of the most basic of amenities, like doors with locks and reliable water. There are the expected culture clashes. The Brits are not used to chaotic riot of noise and color on the streets and the spicy food. But it is worth it to see Maggie Smith’s disdainful expression as she nibbles defiantly on the chocolate biscuits she brought from home, pronouncing, “I won’t eat anything I can’t pronounce!”

Seeing the impeccable performances of this magnificent cast is reason enough to see the film as these actors transform the most conventional of situations by making us care about the characters and their hopes. Wilton’s portrayal of Jean, the bitter wife, shows us how she cannot seem to find her way out of a labyrinth of disappointment. Dench as Evelyn, sitting on the phone listening to an endless recording telling her that her call is very important, knows that she has never really been very important. But there is something more than the kind of bittersweet but cozy story of plucky septuagenarians. Perhaps the reason they stay in the rundown hotel is that they understand how superficial appearances are. Perhaps the idea of restoring its grandeur to what it once was means something to them in a world where old age is “outsourced.” It is encouraging for some of them to learn that “like Darwin’s finches, we are slowly adapting to our environment.”

Parents should know that this film includes some strong language (f-word), sexual references (gay and straight) and partial nudity, sad death, and drinking.

Family discussion: Who gets the biggest surprise? Who changes the most?

If you like this, try: “Enchanted April,” “Monsoon Wedding,” “Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont,” and “A Room With a View”

The Pirates! Band of Misfits

Posted on April 26, 2012 at 6:00 pm

B+

Lowest Recommended Age:	Kindergarten - 3rd Grade
MPAA Rating:	Rated PG for mild action, rude humor, and some language
Profanity:	A few bad words ("crap")
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Scene in bar
Violence/ Scariness:	Comic action-style violence
Diversity Issues:	Diverse characters
Date Released to Theaters:	April 27, 2012
Date Released to DVD:	August 27, 2012
Amazon.com ASIN:	B0034G4P1W

The Pirate Captain (Hugh Grant) enjoys his life of adventure on the high seas, but there are a few problems. His crew is having a spirited debate about the best part of pirating – is it the cutlasses, the looting, the chance to catch exotic diseases, or ham night? Queen Victoria (Imelda Staunton) has ordered the Royal Navy to get rid of all pirates.

Most important, the Pirate Captain really, really wants to win the coveted “Pirate of the Year” award, reasoning that because “Every time I’ve entered, I’ve failed to win. So, I must have a really good chance this time!” He does have a coffee mug that says “World’s Best Captain” and once won a ribbon for telling the best anecdote about a squid.

The wonderful folks at Aardman (“Chicken Run,” “Wallace and Gromit”) have created another deliriously silly stop-motion animation delight, filled with giddy pleasures and so many witty details flying by that you wish for a pause button. The “Pirate of the Year” application is whisked away quickly, but we get a glance at some of the items requested. Was the booty acquired by exciting adventure, a beauty contest, or perhaps in exchange for bonds? And what is the quality of the beard?

The Pirate Captain’s beard is certainly glossy and bushy enough to win a prize, but – it must be said – he is not up to some of the other candidates in other categories. Black Bellamy (Jeremy Piven), Peg Leg Hastings (Lenny Henry), and the bling-sporting beauty Cutlass Liz (Salma Hayek) are out front when it comes to ruthlessness, treasure, and the price on their heads. The Pirate Captain’s wanted poster shows a reward of just 12 doubloons and a free pen. He is not very good at selecting targets for robbery and pillage, boarding a ghost ship, a leper ship, and a boat carrying a school geography field trip.

The prospects for Pirate of the Year seem dim until the Pirate Captain boards another booty-less boat, this one carrying Charles Darwin (David Tennant), who recognizes that the Pirate Captain does have one important asset. It seems the Pirate Captain is as poor at ornithology as he is at treasure-detection. The bird he has insisted is a big-boned parrot named Polly is something much more exotic, and if he presents it to the scientific association and wins their Scientist of the Year award, the fame and fortune just might qualify him for Pirate of the Year!

But others are interested in the bird. Darwin and his trained monkey manservant Mr. Bobo, who communicates entirely via hilarious cue-card style signs and Queen Victoria herself want Polly as well. The various captures and rescues involve various disguises and Aardman’s sublimely inventive chase scenes, combining Rube Goldbergian intricacy with Jackie Chan timing. They also manage to bring in Jane Austen, the Elephant Man, Rubik’s Cube, The Clash, the classic elementary school science experiment combining vinegar and baking soda, and gourmet dining.

The pleasures we expect from an Aardman film are all here, including humor that manages to be both wild and understated. The silent Mr. Bobo, cautioned to be quiet, patiently holds up a second sign repeating the same word, but smaller. And the brilliantly executed action sequences dazzle. The chase scene through Darwin’s house has split-second timing through a museum’s worth of artifacts, including an Easter Island head. The bright and eclectic soundtrack includes very funny new song from Flight of the Conchords. And in the midst of all the action and comedy there is some warmth, even tenderness, as those clay faces become surprisingly expressive, and a moment of friendship and loyalty is genuinely touching.

The British Aardman refreshingly makes few concessions for American sensibilities (only the most devoted Anglophiles will catch the Blue Peter and Slocombe references) and none for children. Gideon Defoe’s screenplay, based on his series of books, is filled with the kind of humor that challenges as it amuses. But the distributor decided that Americans would be put off by the original title. It was released in the UK as “The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists!” both funnier and more accurate. The switch to a more “marketable” generic title is disappointing for a film that so amply rewards its confidence in the audience.

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