Mother’s Day

Posted on April 28, 2016 at 5:20 pm

I tried, Garry Marshall, I really did, but you finally broke me. I did my best to enjoy Valentine’s Day (I called it a tweet of a movie but gave it a B for being mildly entertaining) and New Year’s Eve (I called it a big budget version of the old television series “The Love Boat” and gave it a C, but managed to find some genuinely touching moments). I was fully expecting to find some light entertainment with a galaxy of big stars showing that they can make lackluster material shine a little bit.

So, if “Mother’s Day,” the third in Marshall’s big star/tiny script mash-ups keyed to a holiday, was no worse than the first two, I was determined to give it the benefit of the doubt. I have a mom; I am a mom, I wrote a book about the best movie mothers, and so I’m the prime audience for a bunch of stories about the tenderest and often the most fraught of relationships, mother and child. If it managed to be inoffensive, I would have recommended it. But with this film, Marshall and his inexperienced co-screenwriters cross the tipping point from merely synthetic to downright vile, with apparently no notion of the difference between humor that points out the virulence of bigotry and “jokes” that treat racism and homophobia like just another cutesy personality quirk.

As with the earlier films, there are a lot of characters presenting variations on the theme. But the characters do not even rise to the level of stereotypes and the storylines couldn’t fill a fortune cookie. There is a chasm-sized disconnect between the film’s assumptions about our belief in any of them and its ability to deliver that level of interest. Not one thing is believable even in heightened, glossed-over movie terms. Everyone lives in gorgeous homes and there are no concerns about money. Intrusive product placement gives the film a sleasy infomercial vibe even as it pretends to make fun of home shopping channels hawking cheesy merchandise. Some odd random shots of individuals who have nothing to do with the story are either friends of the filmmaker or evidence that at one time the movie was even worse and got recut. It’s creepy that it takes place in the very diverse city of Atlanta but everyone is white except for the characters whose primary job is to serve as a racial stereotype. Pretty much everyone in the film is a stereotype, but the white ones are not offensive, just dull. The non-white ones are both.

A quick recap of the set-ups — very quick so neither one of us will nod off in stunned boredom. Sandy (Jennifer Aniston) is a single mom with two sons who is upset because her ex (Timothy Olyphant) has married a beautiful young woman. Kristin (Britt Robertson of “Tomorrowland”) loves the father of her baby, an aspiring stand-up comic, but she won’t accept his marriage proposal because she was adopted and thus thinks she does not know who she is. Sisters Jesse (Kate Hudson) and Gabi (Sarah Chalke), who live next door to each other, have not told their bigoted, RV-driving, redneck parents about their spouses — Jesse is married to an Indian-American (Aasif Mandvi) and Gabi is married to a woman (Cameron Esposito). And sad widower Bradley (Jason Sudeikis) has to cope with being a single dad of two daughters. Julia Roberts, in a disastrous orange traffic cone of a hairdo (it’s actually a wig leftover from “Notting Hill”), is also on board as a shopping channel mogul presumably because Garry Marshall gave her her big break in “Pretty Woman” and she will do anything for him.

A series of exposition-heavy introductory scenes (Bradley and his daughters standing at the gravesite: “I can’t believe it’s been a year,” another character explaining, “I have abandonment issues,” Sandy, Jesse, and Gabi helpfully recapping everything that is going on in their lives to each other like the crawl at the bottom of the CNN screen) is followed by a series of micro-complications that fall somewhere between a 6th grade skit and a one-season basic cable sit-com, following by a series of contrived and cloying “resolutions.” The only clunky device left out is words of wisdom from a clown. Oops, no such luck. It’s there. And it’s not over! There are the most lifeless bloopers in the credits in the history of bloopers in the credits.

This is all larded with cornball slapstick wildly outdated “hilarity” that includes a man wearing a woman’s pink silk bathrobe, a man falling off a balcony, a man embarrassed at having to buy tampons for his daughter, a woman with her shirt ripped open holding supposedly professional design presentation model that looks like a third grade diorama, and the same woman getting her arm stuck in a vending machine.

It gets worse. Cops run down a speeding vehicle and make the only non-white character lie down on the ground. It gets resolved when one of the officers recognizes him; the issue of racial profiling is portrayed as a joke. So is a crack about a little person named “Shorty.” The stand-up comic ends up holding his baby and not delivering any jokes during his crucial make-it-or-break-it set, jokes which were not only funny but which might have made it funny and meaningful. Same for this wilted bouquet of a movie. Give Mom breakfast in bed instead.

Parents should know that this film includes discussions of bigotry but also insensitive portrayals of racism and homophobia, brief strong language, sad off-screen death of a parent, family issues about divorce and remarriage, some strong language, and alcohol, including scenes with a baby in a bar.

Family discussion: How did meeting Miranda make Kristen think differently about marriage? What should Jesse have told her parents about her husband?

If you like this, try: “Valentine’s Day” and “New Year’s Eve”

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My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2

Posted on March 24, 2016 at 5:46 pm

The original “My Big Fat Greek Wedding” was a charming surprise, a fresh, honest story about a young woman trying to find a way to be true to herself despite her loving but overwhelmingly intrusive Greek-American family. This 15-years-later sequel is an overstuffed, undercooked cash grab, operating at the low level of a basic cable sit-com with a juiced-up laugh track. There’s a big difference between finding it funny when a family has what therapists call boundary issues and bombarding the audience with overshares. Or, as Toula tells us just to make sure we understand, “We see no difference between hugging and suffocation.”

The original was an exaggerated but affectionate portrayal of family dynamics that are familiar to anyone who struggled to find a distinctive individual direction despite family expectations to the contrary, which is pretty much everyone. The sequel is grotesque caricature, repeating and coarsening the humor of the first one, with repeated clunky set-ups for each of its obvious twists. The first one was a sleeper made for a shoestring that became one of the highest-profit films of all time, released in the same month as a big-budget special effects flop, “Pluto Nash,” with a mirror image record-breaking balance sheet — it lost almost as much as “Big Fat Greek Wedding” made. This sequel won’t set any records in either direction. It has some appealing characters and mild humor. But it devalues the franchise so badly that it is retroactive, diluting any remaining affection for the first one.

The couple who had the titular nuptials in the 2002 film were Toula (screenwriter Nia Vardalos), the daughter of Greek-American restaurant owners who dreamed of working with computers as a travel agent, and Ian (John Corbett), a WASP-y vegetarian teacher. At the engagement party, her parents brought a battalion of cousins named Nicky. His parents brought a bundt cake. An adorable culture clash! Is this a great country or what!

Fifteen years later, Toula, Ian, and their 17-year-old daughter Paris (Elena Kampouris, lovely even in ghoulish makeup) live next door to her parents, Gus (Michael Constantine), who still believes that the Greeks invented everything and Windex can cure anything, and Maria (Lainie Kazan), who still lets him think he runs everything. Toula tries hard to make everyone happy as she is sandwiched between a daughter who needs her less than she wants her to and parents who need her more than she wants them to. “Just when my daughter doesn’t want me around anymore, my parents need me more than ever.”

All the relatives live right nearby and everyone is up in each other’s business all the time and Hollywood Greek-Americans John Stamos and Rita Wilson, who produced the film, show up for an obvious gag and can the Stamos character, a TV newscaster really have a tagline involving shooting a finger-gun?

Toula’s big fat Greek family is supposed to be loveable, but they are just shrill and annoying. Either Aunt Voula (Andrea Martin) is going into excruciating detail on her sex life or her medical quirks or Gus is trying to find a nice Greek boyfriend for Paris to marry so she can have lots of Greek babies. Ian is now the high school principal and Tula is back where we first met her, working in her parents’ restaurant and even has to don her old glasses. They want Paris to stay near them in Chicago when she goes to college. Like Toula in the first film, Paris wants more independence. Like Toula’s parents in the first film, Toula and Ian do not want to let her go. Meanwhile, their focus on the family has led Toula and Ian to lose touch with one another. So, hey, why not another makeover for Toula?

And this is a Big Fat Greek Wedding film, so there must be another wedding. It turns out that Gus and Maria’s marriage license from half a century ago in Greece was never signed. So, Gus has to persuade Maria to marry him all over again and that means giving her the wedding of her dreams. Opa!

It is filled with the kind of stereotyping that would elicit howls of protest from anti-defamation groups if not made by Greeks themselves. That doesn’t prevent the ugly stereotyping of non-Greeks, all portrayed as thin-blooded and snobbish, except for Ian and the real-life Ian, the actor husband of Vardalos, as a kind-hearted cop who married into the family. A revelation about a family member who is gay could have led to some interesting moments, given the family’s very narrow concepts of masculinity, but it is too busy with jokes about how gross an old man’s nudity is. Even Gus would agree that this is beyond the powers of Windex.

Parents should know that this movie has some crude humor, sexual references, and a non-explicit situation. There is some scuffling, a non-serious medical emergency, social drinking, and tipsiness.

Family discussion: Ask family members about how they handled parent-child conflicts about independence — and weddings. Why was it important for Maria that Gus propose to her?

If you like this, try: the first film and another film from Vardalos, “Connie and Carla”

Kung Fu Panda 3

Posted on January 28, 2016 at 5:24 pm

The only panda more “aw-worthy” than Po (Jack Black), is the National Zoo’s Tian Tian rolling in the snow. In this third outing, the roly poly martial arts hero is still kind, humble, brave, and wiser than he knows. And, once again, the film’s gorgeous visuals lend a touch of epic grandeur to the story that provides a nice balance, as the Furious Five do for Po.

Two important characters join the story. The first is a more powerful foe than any we have seen before. His name is Kai and he has the deep growl of J.K. Simmons and the deep animosity of someone who has been waiting centuries in the Spirit Realm for revenge. He has supernatural powers and it is genuinely shocking to see him quickly overcome a character we thought was the most powerful of all dragon warriors. Kai has the ability to steal the “chi” (life force) of his opponents. And he is determined to defeat the Furious Five, their teacher, Shifu (Dustin Hoffman), and Po as well.

The second new character is Li (warmly voiced by Bryan Cranston), Po’s long-lost biological father. Po loves his adoptive father Mr. Ping (James Hong), proprietor of a small noodle restaurant. But he is very different from everyone around him. That is one reason for his compassion and ability to appreciate the difference in others. He longs to learn more about where he comes from.

As Kai comes closer, Li brings Po to the Panda community, where he is delighted to find out how quickly he feels at home. Mr. Ping has come along, and does his best to hide his jealousy, but he is worried about losing Po.

Fathers are the theme of the film, as Po in a sense loses his spiritual fathers Shifu (who tells Po he must now take over as teacher) and Oogway (Randall Duk Kim) and has to figure out what his new relationship with Li will be and how that will affect Mr. Ping. Po also loses the support of some of the characters he has always depended on when their chi is stolen by Kai. At the same time he is gaining new friends and a community he has always somehow missed, he realizes how much of a family his old friends have been for him.

Kai is coming for the pandas, and so Po must train them to protect themselves. The ultimate battle, though, will be left to the dragon warrior, and even though Po is now a teacher, he still has to discover some new techniques to fight a foe who holds the chi of so many valiant warriors. “There is always something more to learn, even for a master.”

Jennifer Yuh, whose last film in this series is the highest-grossing ever by a woman director, returns with co-director Alessandro Carloni, who worked as as artist on both the previous films. Yuh also began as an artist and the visuals are imaginative and gorgeous, inspired by Chinese paintings and landscapes. Po’s early encounters with his new extended family are endearing. While some families, especially adoptive families, may be uncomfortable with Po’s eagerness to rejoin a group he can barely remember, the issues of abandonment and strain between the biological and adoptive fathers are handled with sensitivity.

Like the martial arts masters themselves, the film achieves a seemingly effortless balance, with a light, graceful touch. It that encompasses silly comedy (mostly delightfully so, though making fun of a character with bad teeth is questionable). And it has some sophisticated, self-aware humor (beginning with a joke on the studio logo and continuing with commentary on “the power of a dramatic entrance”), along with warm-hearted lessons learned, and skillfully-orchestrated action.

Parents should know that this film includes action-style violence, some characters (temporarily) transformed and turned into enemy operatives, themes of adoption and identity with jealousy between adoptive and biological parents, and some potty humor.

Family discussion: How does Po feel differently about PIng and Li? Why did Shifu want Po to teach the others? What is the wrong thing for the right reasons?

If you like this, try: the first two “Kung Fu Panda” movies

The Lady in the Van

Posted on January 21, 2016 at 5:55 pm

What connects us to each other? What creates a sense of obligation? Why is it that we somehow find ourselves alone when we don’t want to be and with others when we don’t want to be? Are there secrets that completely change the way we think about people we thought we knew?

And is it possible to be fair to the other people in our lives when we tell stories about them?

Writer Alan Bennett (“The History Boys,” “The Madness of King George”) got an urgent appeal from a disheveled woman in a kerchief. You know the kind of person I am talking about, the ones we ignore or pretend to ignore. She is not exactly homeless. She has a dilapidated, broken-down van parked on the street near his new home. His neighbors are not unkind. One even tries to bring her food. But for some reason, Miss Shepherd (Maggie Smith) likes Bennett. And for some equally inexplicable reason, he kind of doesn’t dislike her. And for another equally inexplicable reason, as frustrating and annoying and inconvenient and often infuriating as Miss Shepherd (as he always calls her) is, he finds it easier to deal with her than with his own mother, who is beset with her own cognitive challenges.

“A writer is doubled,” Bennett tells us, “the one who writes, the one who lives.” He is clearly most comfortable as the one who writes. And we get to see them both. Alex Jennings plays two slightly different variations on Bennett, the subtle variations of clothing and attitude showing us the tension as he wavers between being involved and observing. Part of him recoils from Miss Shepherd’s “multi-flavored aroma” with a thin layer of talcum powder. Part of him knows that she could lead to exactly what we are watching — a book, a radio play, a theatrical production, a movie with an Oscar-winning Dame in the title role. Yes, she asks if she can park temporarily in his driveway and stays for 15 years. But given the money he made from the story, who was sponging on who?

A writer will inevitably be drawn to the peculiar mix of sense and nonsense, sometimes called a word salad, coming from someone like Miss Shepherd. There’s something about the way she ends her mildly preposterous statements with equivocation. “I’m in an incognito position, possibly,” she tells Bennett. He will learn more about her past, but Bennett has enough respect for us and for Miss Shepherd that there is no attempt to try to explain her. It is just to help us do what he did instinctively, though perhaps reluctantly — to see the person inside the weirdness.

“A proper writer might welcome such an encounter.” Yes, he might. Yet, he thinks, “You won’t catch Harold Pinter pushing a van down the street.” Shouldn’t a writer get to pick his subject? “I don’t want to write about her,” he says. “I want to write about spies.” He knows that “you don’t put yourself into what you write; you find yourself.” And his two selves seem to come closer together as Miss Shepherd disintegrates further. If, as Arthur Miller wrote in “Death of a Salesman,” attention must be paid to people we would prefer to overlook, Bennett has done that for Miss Shepherd, with grace and humanity.

Parents should know that this film includes themes of mental and physical illness, fatal car accident, blackmail, and non-explicit sexual situations and bodily functions.

Family discussion: Why did Alan treat his mother and Miss Shepherd differently? Why does he let her stay? Why are there two Alans and what can we tell from the way they dress and speak?

If you like this, try: “The Madness of King George” by the same author and his early work in “Beyond the Fringe”

Joy

Posted on December 24, 2015 at 5:38 pm

Jennifer Lawrence is “Joy,” reuniting with her “American Hustle” and “Silver Linings Playbook” #squad, director David O. Russell and co-stars Robert De Niro and Bradley Cooper. She plays real-life consumer products inventor and television sales mogul Joy Mangano, who lived something of a Cinderella story — if the fairy godmother was the QVC shopping channel.

The film is something of a mess. It never quite comes together, but some of the individual pieces are marvelous, especially the performances by Lawrence, radiant in her first adult lead (though she still seems too young to have those children), Virginia Madsen as Joy’s dotty mother, De Niro as her father, and Isabella Rossellini as his wealthy new girlfriend. Cooper has so much magnetism as a QVC executive that his tour of the network’s revolving studio provides one of the best moments. He is so good it misdirects us about where the movie is going and leaves us feeling vaguely cheated.

Russell, who so savagely took out after both consumer culture and at those who attack it for the most superficial reasons in the underrated “I Heart Huckabees,” cannot seem to settle into a point of view beyond the idea that the woman with the almost-too-on-the-nose name has the ingenuity and what used to be called moxie to overcome obstacles that include massive family dysfunction and business partners who bully and defraud her. It emphasizes her ability as an inventor and her determination but loses track of the storyline with confusing sequencing and superfluous narration. When a prospective funder asks her if she would be willing to pick up a (possibly metaphorical) gun to protect her invention, she says she would. And when she is turned down, she keeps coming back. But the primary factors in the success of her product are a chance connection and a much-too-convenient discovery of incriminating evidence. The most interesting elements of the story are abruptly glossed over (What? Who sued her?). And lovingly staged episodes from Joy’s mother’s favorite soap opera (starring real-life soap stars including Susan Lucci) are not nearly as entertaining or illuminating as they are intended to be.

Joy has monumental obstacles to overcome and Russell clearly considers her heroic, but there is a heightened gloss on the story that keeps us at a remove. A moment of particular triumph is truncated and artificial and the narration is clumsy and intrusive. “In America,” Cooper’s character tells us, “the ordinary meets the extraordinary every day.” But in this movie, that meeting is awkward, and the result is buyer’s remorse.

Parents should know that this movie includes themes of family conflict and dysfunction, corrupt, thuggish, and fraudulent behavior, some sexual references, and some strong language.

Family discussion: Why did Joy keep taking care of everyone in her family? What did Neil mean about staying friends? What invention would you like to create?

If you like this, try: “Erin Brockovich”