A Very Harold & Kumar 3D Christmas

Posted on November 5, 2011 at 6:56 pm

I was pretty sure that the line between being lame and making fun of being lame was fairly distinct but in this film Harold (John Cho) and Kumar (Kal Penn) push it so hard it almost dissolves. We’ve all come a long way since the original film came out in 2004 and charmed everyone with the unpretentiousness of its protagonists’ aspirations (they just wanted some of those scrumptious square burgers from White Castle) and its own (silly stoner fun). The sequel in 2008 brought in a politics by taking our heroes to Guantanamo prison and a meeting with the President. And now they’re back.

Harold has moved on. He is married to the beautiful Maria (Paula Garces) and has a beautiful home and a fancy job on Wall Street. He even has an obsequious assistant.

What he doesn’t have is the respect of his father-in-law (the scary Danny Trejo) or his old friend. Harold hangs out with a dweeby new friend, now, and his name is Todd (Tom Lennon). He and Kumar have gone their separate ways and never see each other.

Kumar has been kicked out of med school for failing a drug test. His girlfriend has left him. All he has left is a weed habit and a dweeby new friend, Adrian (Amir Blumenfeld). He and Harold have nothing in common anymore. But when he brings Harold a package that was delivered to their old apartment and accidentally sets Harold’s father-in-law’s prize Christmas tree on fire, they team up again to find a replacement and go on a journey that will include drugs, nudity, a claymation interlude, a song and dance from Neil Patrick Harris (worth the price of admission as a demented version of himself, singing and dancing and explaining that the gay thing is just a ruse to help him get more girls), more drugs including marijuana smoke in 3D that floats out into the theater, 3D jokes, hot nude nuns, Russian gangsters, and a drug-taking baby.

It hasn’t quite jumped the doobie yet, but the shtick is getting tired. Things that were funny in a college kid are not so funny when they get older and Kumar’s pudgy slacker-hood just seems sad. It’s as though they made a check-list of ways to be outrageous instead of letting the humor come naturally from the situations. When they and their characters were new to us we enjoyed the sense of discovery. But when they make jokes about Penn’s service in the White House and Harris is no longer a has-been but, thanks in part to the first movie, an Entertainment Weekly cover/J.J. Abrams musical-starring success, it feels phoned in and phony.

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3D Comedy Series/Sequel

Tower Heist

Posted on November 4, 2011 at 10:09 am

If the Occupy Wall Street crowd decided to make it movie it would be “Tower Heist,” the story of 99%-ers stealing back from a 1% guy what he stole from them.

Alan Alda has a lot of fun playing a bad guy for a change, a Madoff-style villain named Arthur Shaw who takes a daily swim in his rooftop pool with an enormous painting of a hundred dollar bill along the bottom. He lives in the penthouse of a luxury building in New York with an attentive staff under the perfectionist eye of building manager Josh Kovacs (Ben Stiller). The employees entrusted him with their pension money and when he is arrested for securities fraud they realize that the money they saved and counted on for retirement has disappeared. Luther, the doorman (Stephen McKinley Henderson) is so disconsolate he attempts suicide. And Josh is so frustrated and furious that he plots a heist to steal some of their money back, with the help of a lowlife neighbor named Slide (Eddie Murphy, who co-produced). Josh has spent years protecting Shaw and the other wealthy residents of the building by creating an unbreakable security system. And he has spent years losing to Shaw in their online chess game. Will he be able to take Shaw’s king?

Co-scripter Ted Griffin wrote “Oceans 11” so he knows that heist films depend on three things: (1) We have to be on the side of the thieves and it helps to have them steal from an arrogant bad guy. Check. (2) It has to be a challenge with some enormous logistical obstacles to outsmart. Check. And (3) there have to be some unexpected problems for our anti-heroes to solve as the caper is underway. Check again.

It is a pleasure to see Eddie Murphy, who co-produced, funny again in a live action film, playing a character who might be an older, less smooth relative of his “48 Hours” Reggie Hammond. Instead of trying to play all the parts himself, he blends into a top-notch ensemble cast that includes Téa Leoni as an FBI agent, Gabourey Sidibe of “Precious” as a maid who is handy with locks, an abashed Matthew Broderick as a failed Wall Streeter evicted from the building, and Michael Peña and Casey Affleck as accomplices. We could use a lot more Leoni (any movie could use more Leoni) and the conclusion feels awkwardly tacked on, but it is timely and fun.

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Comedy Crime

Christmas with a Capital C

Posted on November 1, 2011 at 9:05 am

Lowest Recommended Age:	Kindergarten - 3rd Grade
MPAA Rating:	Not Rated
Profanity:	None
Alcohol/ Drugs:	None
Violence/ Scariness:	None
Diversity Issues:	A theme of the movie
Date Released to Theaters:	2011
Date Released to DVD:	November 1, 2011
Amazon.com ASIN:	B005BRFN8Q

This Dove-approved family film stars Ted McGinley and Daniel Baldwin as one-time high school rivals who find themselves on opposite sides again when they battle over Christmas decorations in a small Alaska town and learn that Christmas is not about what is displayed but what is felt and shared.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MkK30YFv9u0

The Rum Diary

Posted on October 27, 2011 at 6:15 pm

22-year-old Hunter S. Thompson wrote a novel about men in their 30’s working for a Puerto Rican newspaper, equally soaked in the title libation and the brinier flavors of cynicism and failure, but it was not published until more than 30 years later.

Now, it is a movie starring Thompson fan Johnny Depp (who played Thompson in Terry Gilliam’s “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas”). He plays Paul Kemp, a would-be novelist and near-alcoholic who extends his fiction-writing skills to his resume to apply for a job working for a near-broke newspaper in Puerto Rico. He needn’t have amplified his credentials; no one else applied for the job. The exhausted editor (Richard Jenkins) knows he lied but has no other choice and his expectations are even lower than his alternatives. He says all he wants is a writer who won’t drink all the time.

No such luck.

Kemp is most interesting as the reflection of the real-life 22-year-old who was already worried about becoming dissipated, ineffectual, and hopeless. His passionate love of language is palpable. He spins out an elaborate sentence with the exuberance of youthful excess but lands it with breathtaking precision that demonstrates he is already a master. The plot is simple. Kemp is frustrated that the paper will only publish pieces that make the advertisers happy, which means nothing critical of anyone or anything in Puerto Rico. He briefly agrees to moonlight as a writer for a shady real estate development coordinated by Sanderson (Aaron Eckhart), who has a beautiful home and a beautiful girlfriend (the very lovely Amber Heard). And he briefly stops drinking.

There’s an endearing sweetness to the film. The unabashed affection Depp and writer/director Bruce Robinson have for Thompson is contagious as we see Kemp begin to find himself as a writer even as he perhaps begins to lose himself in the gorgeous excess of his appetites. The book is a novel, but the movie concludes by merging the fictional Kemp with the real-life Thompson with a buoyant couple of lines about what happens next.

In one scene Sanderson’s girlfriend and Kemp are driving in a borrowed convertible and she dares him to drive faster: “I’ll bet you scream before I do.” He floors it and they surge ahead, both reckless, ravenous for adventure, seeking the ultimate, no matter the cost. They both scream, and screech to a halt inches from the end of a pier. Knowing what lay ahead for Thompson, it feels good to see a moment when he knew where to stop.

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Based on a book Comedy Drama

Puss In Boots

Posted on October 27, 2011 at 6:00 pm

The popular feline bandit of the “Shrek” series gets his own feature film, one that is less of a fractured fairy tale and more of a swashbuckler. Antonio Banderas returns as the voice of Puss in Boots, the cat with the heart of a lion — and the eyes of a cute little kitty.

This is a prequel, set in a fanciful Spanish countryside, showing us Puss’ life as an orphan, his early friendship with Humpty Dumpty, the betrayal that led him to become an outlaw, and his efforts to find redemption.

“What can I say? I was a bad kitty,” he tells us as he bids farewell to a pretty feline whose name he can’t quite remember. He is “a fugitive from the law, searching for a way to clear my name.” He walks into a bar and silences the snickering caballeros, telling them, “You don’t want to make the cat angry.” He is looking for a way to score but he has his own set of values: no stealing from churches or orphans.

Magic beans, on the other hand, are another story, especially if they have already been stolen. And it turns out that the magic beans have special significance to Puss and to his old friend.

Puss makes a new friend, too, a hooded fellow thief who wants the same beans. At first, in a charmingly designed cat hide-out, they compete against each other with an hilarious dance-off. But then the thief removes the hood and is revealed to be the notorious Softpaw, a brilliant and beautiful female thief (voice of Banderas’ “Desperado” co-star Salma Heyek). And they are joined by Humpty, though their history makes it difficult for Puss to trust him.

The beans are magic, and the beanstalk takes them to a cloud-land where they find the goose that lays golden eggs. Or, as Softpaw puts it, “It’s a gold pooper; we’re taking it.” Will this be a chance for Puss to right past wrongs? Or will it just make him an even badder kitty?

Less visually striking, less funny, and less heart-warming than the Shrek movies and with completely unnecessary 3D, it is a step down for the series. The kitty hide-out and dance-off are well handled and there are some funny moments, but the death of a major character is too jarring for younger children. Puss is a better supporting player than a star.

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