Good Luck Chuck

Posted on January 15, 2008 at 8:00 am

At age 10, following an awkward Spin the Bottle encounter, a little goth girl puts a hex on Charlie so that he will be surrounded by love but never find it himself. But it is the audience who will feel cursed. It is hard to tell which is more painfully difficult to sit through — the awful premise of this film or the dull filler that occupies the rest of the time onscreen.

Charlie grows up into stand-up comedian Dane Cook and becomes a dentist. When word gets out that sex with him is a quicker path to marriage than eHarmony, every gorgeous woman in town wants to sleep with him so that she can find her one true love as soon as it is over. His best friend Stu (Tony award-winner Dan Fogler), a plastic surgeon specializing in breast enhancement, disgusting, sex-obsessed conversation, and having sex with citrus, persuades Charlie that this is practically a public service, helping women to find love while having lots and lots and lots of sex. Charlie gives in and has sex with just about every unattached female in the state.

And then he meets the adorably klutzy Cam (Jessica Alba), who runs the penguin house at the local equivalent of Sea World. But he worries that if he has sex with her, she’ll meet the man of her dreams. So he has to find a way to romance her without sex.

Cook is an observational comic who thinks that referring to something is the same as making a joke about it. He is physically energetic but intellectually lazy. His appeal comes from his utter lack of embarrassment and complete absence of boundaries, making college kids feel understood and connected. His stand-up routine is the equivalent of a Facebook page. This movie is like one of his jokes, all set-up, and then a lot of energy in the hopes the audience won’t notice there is no real pay-off. We get that it is supposed to be funny that Charlie has a lot of sex with pretty girls. But they drag the joke on forever, showing Cook in a dozen different positions, not because it is particularly funny or sexy but because they have 90 minutes to fill and hope we will be distracted by all those breasts. Any movie that has to fall back on a climactic race to the airport for drama and having sex with food for comedy has run out of ideas before it began. Oh, and please don’t bother to stay for the last little improvised “joke” over the credits.

One more aspect of this film that is particularly troubling is that it is an extremely raunchy R-rated film but its humor is so juvenile its most likely audience is young teenagers, the only group likely to find it funny just because it has naughty words and naked ladies. Anyone old enough to see this movie is likely to be too old to find much to laugh at.

Parents should know that this film has extremely explicit and crude sexual references and situations and a great deal of nudity that would rate an NC-17 if in anything but a comedy. Characters use very strong and vulgar language. There is comic violence (no one badly hurt). Characters drink, including one who drinks to deal with stress, and one character is a pothead, a frequent source of humor.

Audiences who see this movie should talk about which time-honored techniques the film uses to keep Charlie a sympathetic character, despite some crass, selfish, and exploitive behavior. What made him see Cam differently?

Audiences who enjoy this film will also enjoy The 40-Year-Old Virgin and Knocked Up.

Related Tags:

Comedy Romance

The Pirates Who Don’t Do Anything-A Veggie Tales Movie

Posted on January 11, 2008 at 9:14 am

B-

Lowest Recommended Age:	Preschool
MPAA Rating:	G
Profanity:	None
Alcohol/ Drugs:	None
Violence/ Scariness:	Some mild peril and briefly scary monsters
Diversity Issues:	None
Date Released to Theaters:	January 11, 2008

The Veggie Tales have produced a series of popular computer-animated videos for children and their families, with fruit and vegetable-inspired characters in engaging and funny stories with gentle moral overtones. Their new feature film does not mention God, as the videos do (briefly but explicitly). It is a fable-like story of three unlikely heros who find themselves called upon to rescue a captured prince and princess. They have been captured by their evil pirate uncle, who is planning to usurp the throne. We know he must be a bad guy because like all classic movie villains, he has a deep voice with an English accent. Unlike the other characters, he also has arms and legs, or rather one leg and one peg.
Princess Eloise, in a Princess Leia-like desperate call for help, throws a golden ball into the ocean and tells it to find her some heroes. But the people, or rather, vegetables it finds do not seem very heroic and certainly do not think of themselves that way. They are “cabin boys” (waiters) in a pirate-themed dinner theater called “Pieces of Ate” who can’t even manage to get up the nerve to try out for the show. Elliot is afraid of so many things that he keeps a fight list. Sedgewick is lazy and thinks trying is too much work. And George, who has the husky cadences of a Borscht Belt comic, does not respect himself and realizes that his children do not respect him, either.
But the golden ball finds them and soon they find themselves on a rowboat in the ocean, on their way to rescue Princess Eloise and her brother Prince Alexander. Each of our trio will face important challenges and learn important lessons. And of course there will be a little adventure and a lot of silliness and a couple of musical numbers along the way.
The Veggie Tales’ colorful but limited animation can seem static on the big screen, and children used adventures that conclude in a brisk half hour may find this feature film a little long. But the gentle humor and equally gentle lessons will be appealing to younger children and long-time fans.

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Best Spiritual Films of 2007 — Beliefnet Group Discussion

Posted on January 11, 2008 at 7:53 am

Be sure to check out the new Beliefnet Discussion Group on the Best Spiritual Films of last year and let us hear about the movies that inspired and nourished you.

Related Tags:

Spiritual films

First Sunday

Posted on January 10, 2008 at 5:00 pm

Lowest Recommended Age:	High School
MPAA Rating:	Rated PG-13 for language, some sexual humor, and brief drug references.
Profanity:	Some strong language
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Drinking, brief drug references
Violence/ Scariness:	Mostly comic peril and violence including guns, people held hostage
Diversity Issues:	Humor based on mildly sexist, homophobic, and racist sterotypes
Date Released to Theaters:	January 11, 2008

first%20sunday.jpg Ice Cube was once a member of the fiercely provocative gangsta rap group N.W.A. (for N****** With Attitude). He is now a prolific Hollywood producer with franchise films from R-rated (the Friday series) to family-friendly (Are We There Yet?). He is going for the PG-13 market with “First Sunday,” and it is more product than movie, filled with signifiers instead of story. It has the slapstick of a The Three Stooges short without the comic timing, the characters of “Hot Ghetto Mess” without the irony, and the stereotypes of Amos ‘n’ Andy without the wit.
Cube and “30 Rock’s” Tracy Morgan play Durell and LeeJohn, a hapless duo sentenced to community service after a series of petty infractions. Durell’s ex is about to move away, taking his son with her, unless he can give her the money she needs to open a beauty salon. LeeJohn needs to reimburse some bad guys for failing to make a delivery as promised. When Durell and LeeJohn find out that the local church has raised more than $200,000, they decide to steal it, and end up taking the deacon, the preacher, his bootylicious daughter, and the choir and choirmaster (comedian Katt Williams) hostage. They take the audience hostage as well because this section of the film seems to go on forever.
In between the tired jokes about guzzling sacramental wine, “pimped”-up wheelchairs, a masseur who turns out to be male, a developmentally disabled man, and a very tight skirt, there are very strong moments and performances that deepen our disappointment about what this movie could have been. The always-exquisite Olivia Cole appears as one of the hostages, bringing class and dignity to her too-brief moments on screen. The talented Regina Hall makes the most of her brief appearance as Omunique, Durell’s baby mama. Her part could easily have been a caricature, nothing but bling (check out those earrings) and shrill demands for money. But she is always real and appealing, making it clear that she may be a little desperate but that she is protective of the love Durell and his son have for each other. Williams, as ever, seems to be in his own movie, completely independent of whatever the screenplay and director had in mind, and his offbeat energy and subversive humor brighten the otherwise-interminable hostage scenes in the church sanctuary.
There are also brief glimpses of some themes well worth exploring. The characters debate the idea of rebuilding and expanding the church in its current location or moving it to somewhere less “urban” and “congested,” acknowledged code words for abandoning the poorer, more crime-ridden black community. The portrayal of the community’s commitment to fatherhood is welcome, as the hostages, gangsters, and his angry ex all unquestioningly support the bond between Durell and his son. But this is not enough to surmount the offensiveness of material so cynical and pandering it would have infuriated Ice Cube in his N.W.A. days. Attitude is just what this movie is missing.

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Sunshine

Posted on January 8, 2008 at 12:34 pm

The sun is dying. A rocket ship from earth, meaningfully named “Icarus,” failed in its mission to reboot the sun with a supercharged nuclear payload designed to “create a star within a star.” Now the earth’s last chance is Icarus II. If they do not deliver the payload, the sun and all of its planets will die.

But this is not the usual “and then something goes wrong” or “and then an alien leaps out of a crew member’s chest” space opera. This is a meticulously constructed story that presents its characters with a series of exponentially more complex moral and practical dilemmas as gripping as the perilous situations that threaten the mission.

Director Danny Boyle transcends genre. His films have ranged from horror (28 Days Later) to thrillers (Shallow Grave) to charming family fantasy (Millions). But all of his films focus on moral choices. In 28 Days Later, he showed us a world infested with enraged zombies where it is the uninfected humans who are the scariest predators. In both Shallow Grave and Millions, characters discover the corrosive effect of stolen money. Boyle likes to make us think about what we would do to survive, how far we would go to get something we wanted.

The crew of Icarus II has just passed the point where communication with earth has been cut off. They are alone, a community unto themselves, and they must struggle with the remnants of the priorities and procedures they have been given as they are confronted with increasingly dire circumstances and increasingly conflicted priorities.

Should they change their course to try to save anyone who might still be there? No, that would interfere with their mission. But what if it might increase the chance of completing the mission? And what if things change and it is essential for completing the mission?

And what if there is not enough oxygen for everyone? How do we decide who gets to live? By assigning blame? By rank? By who is most important for completion of the mission? And, at the end of these judgments, who are we? How do they change us?

Boyle and his able cast create an atmosphere of conviction and sincerity that makes us invest in the answers to these questions, and the debates as gripping as the action scenes.

Parents should know that this is an intense and disturbing movie, with extreme peril, some jump-out-at-you shocks, and some graphic violence. Characters are injured and killed and there is a suicide. One of the strengths of the movie is the way it presents moral issues in a provocative manner, and that may be disturbing for some audience members. Another strength of the movie is its portrayal of diverse characters.

Families who see this movie should talk about how the characters evaluated their choices. What were their priorities? When they disagreed, what were the determining factors? Authors often use science fiction and the device of putting diverse characters in an environment that is cut off from everyone else to highlight particular controversies. How would this story have been different if it took place today, in the US?

Families who enjoy this film will also enjoy Silent Running, Apollo 13, and 2001 – A Space Odyssey. Books like Tragic Choices and The Problems of Jurisprudence consider ways to evaluate options in a legal, economic, and public policy framework and of course many books consider moral, ethical, and spiritual approaches to these issues as well.