Gulliver’s Travels

Posted on April 19, 2011 at 8:00 am

A cringe-inducing catastrophe with all of the appeal of fingernails on blackboard, this movie’s first early warning sign should have been the omission of Jonathan Swift from the opening credits.

I thought at first it was an arrogant oversight. Now I think it is more likely his ghost showed up and threatened to haunt the film-makers and their descendants forever if they did not remove any mention of his name. Swift is the man who wrote the book, with satire so biting and fantasy so thrilling that it has endured for almost 300 years. It will survive this, too, but just barely.

The story has been updated so that Gulliver, like every other aspect of the story, is downgraded (and degraded). In Swift’s book, he is a surgeon. Here, played by a doughy and lusterless Jack Black, he is a guy who works in a newspaper mailroom, too insecure to try to get a promotion or ask out the beautiful editor he adores (Amanda Peet, who does her best to pretend she is in a better movie).

In order to impress her, Gulliver plagiarizes some travel pieces. She gives him an assignment to investigate the Bermuda triangle. I know this is a fantasy, but since when can newspapers afford a mail room staff and what appears to be a bountiful budget for investigative travel pieces?

Gulliver gets trapped in a vortex that lands him in a kingdom called Lilliput, populated by people who are just six inches tall. As in the book, at first he is captured, tied down while he is asleep on the beach. He stands up, ripping the ropes open. But there was noting in the book about his pants falling down, and then having him fall backwards with a poor Lilliputian apparently smothered by his, uh, tush separation.

And then it really gets disgusting. Gulliver has to rescue the king from a fire and, finding no water within reach, pees on everything to douse the flames . As dispiriting as that is, it is not as bad as the flaccid torpor of the script, which shows utter contempt for its audience in every line. Every reference, joke, and plot development is tired and predictable. Gulliver collects — guess! Yep, “Star Wars” action figures. At work, he slacks off by — guess! Playing “Guitar Hero.” When he persuades the Lilliputians that he is known as President Awesome back home where he comes from, we see posters all over the city with Gulliver appearing as the hero of every movie or play from “West Side Story” to “Wicked.” Those are hardly recognizable, much less knee-slapping references for anyone under 40.

Even worse, Gulliver is a thoroughly unpleasant character. He reflexively lies to everyone. He is selfish, incurious, and thoughtless. There is a dull storyline about a Lilliputian commoner named Horatio (a sweet Jason Segal) who dares to love the princess (a regal Emily Blunt), but it is ineptly handled. When the princess challenges the bad guy (Chris O’Dowd, the movie’s sole highlight) to come up with a reason for loving her, predictably, he can’t. But then, shouldn’t Horatio demonstrate some understanding or appreciation of the princess to show his fitness? The script and director Rob Letterman cannot be bothered to follow through. It just keeps desperately throwing stuff at the audience, finally including a killer robot.

Letterman, who showed he knows better in “Monsters vs. Aliens,” blows all the possibilities of the book’s shrewd (and still very relevant) commentary for silly sight gags like Gulliver’s using the Lilliputians to re-enact video games and DVDs. A “Titanic” joke! Stop!

A lump of coal in the stockings of everyone behind this mess.

Arthur

Posted on April 7, 2011 at 6:00 pm

Russell Brand takes over the title role in this unnecessary remake of the better-remembered-than-re-watched 1981 film starring Dudley Moore and the Oscar-winning Sir John Gielgud. It’s harder to find a perpetually substance-abusing hedonist funny these days than it was back in the Reagan Administration era. There have just been too many boy-men comedies and too many episodes of “Celebrity Intervention” since then to give this idea the freshness it had 30 years ago. Compare the advertising taglines for the films. Circa 1981: Not everyone who drinks is a poet, some of us drink because we’re not. Circa 2011: No Work. All Play. Crisper, perhaps, but dumbed down and not too ambitious or intriguing.

Brand, who can do quite well when he essentially plays himself, his offhand delivery contrasting nicely with the outrageousness of the comments, is a comedian, not an actor, and he seems lost just when his character most needs to demonstrate the depth to persuade us that two fine women see something worth loving in him. When Brand shows up in the opening credits as not just star but co-producer, it becomes drearily obvious that this movie was the result of nothing more than a “let’s find a vehicle for Russell” meeting. There is no sense at any point that anyone connected with the film had any special inspiration about either remaking or updating the original. We hear a few notes from the original film’s Oscar- and Grammy-winning song (“When you get caught between the moon and New York Ciiiity….”), but just a few flickers of what made the Moore version so appealing.

As in the first film, Arthur is a fabulously wealthy man who tries to amuse himself by over-spending or over-indulging in alcohol and women or preferably both at once. His loyal nanny (Dame Helen Mirren replacing Gielgud as the butler) is the only one who is close to him and the only one who cares about him. His mother is a tycoon who would hold him in disdain if she thought he was worth the effort. The girl he slept with the night before tucked his watch into her purse. The cops get a bit annoyed when he floors it in his Batmobile. And somehow showering money and gifts on random strangers does not win him friends, either.

Arthur’s mother gives him an ultimatum. Either he marries the rapaciously ambitious Susan (Jennifer Garner, having a lot of fun but not quite managing to squelch her innate niceness) or he is cut off from the fortune and must find some other way to support himself. Even though he has just met a girl named Naomi who might make him happy (indie darling Greta Gerwig in her first big-budget leading role), he agrees. The dilemma gets amped up as Arthur becomes more attached to Naomi and when he meets Susan’s father, played by Nick Nolte in a tasteless role as a nouveau riche bully who casually plucks out the nails Arthur accidentally shot into him and forces Arthur to put his tongue in a buzz saw. And then Arthur, who has always been taken care of, has to care for someone else when his nanny becomes, as she would say, ill.

“I like earning something,” Naomi tells Arthur, “And I know you don’t know what that feels like. It is great.” I like movies that earn the respect and affection of their audience with diligence, sincerity, and imagination. The people behind this movie do not know what that feels like, and that doesn’t feel great.

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Comedy Remake Romance

Jane Eyre

Posted on March 24, 2011 at 10:03 pm

Why do film-makers keep coming back to Jane Eyre? Charlotte Bronte’s story has elements of horror, mystery, revenge, romance, and morality, but it is an internal narrative, Jane’s own clear-eyed but personal view of her story (“Reader, I married him.”) And yet, it is such a perennial favorite that this is at least the ninth (at least and so far) English-language cinematic visit to the wild moors and the wilder hearts of Jane Eyre. And that is not counting the many, many variations and spin-offs, including a book and movie that tell the same story from the perspective of another character.

Jane Eyre is an orphan, raised under the cruelest circumstances by her aunt (Sally Hawkins). Her spirit and integrity are such an affront to the aunt that she is sent away to a charity school called Lowood, where the girls are treated with contempt. She makes one true, loving friend, a girl named Helen, who ties of consumption in Jane’s arms. When she finishes at Lowood, Jane (Mia Wasikowska of “The Kids are All Right” and “In Treatment” in a performance that beautifully conveys both Jane’s emotional vulnerability and her strength of character) takes a job as a governess at a home called Thornfield. She is warmly welcomed by the housekeeper, Mrs. Fairfax (Dame Judi Dench) and her charge, a little French girl, but it is some time before she meets her new employer, Mr. Rochester (Michael Fassbender, in a less broody, more desperately unhappy performance). When she first sees him, she is walking in the woods and his horse rears up and throws him. She must help him to the house and they walk slowly, him leaning on her heavily. The emotional upheaval and unexpected intimacy of this encounter are followed by mysterious disturbances in the house, by an anguished longing, an almost unimaginable romantic ecstasy, and then by betrayal, loss, a new start, unexpected independence, and then acknowledgment of a connection too strong to resist.

And it is that relationship, all smolder and repressed passion, that answers the question. The Eyre/Rochester romance has inspired happy sighs for 160 years and in these days, when so little is repressed that no one makes time for smolder, it still delivers.

Director Cary Fukunaga (“Sin Nombre”) wisely used natural light and no make-up to give this version a rough, natural, intimate feel. Jane’s hair is a smooth loop over each ear with an intricate knot in the back, showing capability and determination. And perhaps some imagination as well. The way that the setting and events seem to embody the emotion the main characters cannot express, which is what makes an internally narrated story so compellingly cinematic.

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Colin Firth as Henry Higgins?

Posted on February 19, 2011 at 11:52 am

There are rumors that Colin Firth (“The King’s Speech,” “Pride and Prejudice,” “Bridget Jones’ Diary”) may be the new Professor Henry Higgins in a forthcoming remake of “My Fair Lady,” to be directed by Joe Wright (who directed the Kiera Knightly version of “Pride and Prejudice”). Carey Mulligan of “An Education” might play Eliza Doolittle.

I am skeptical of remakes in many circumstances, and of course the George Cukor version of My Fair Lady with Audrey Hepburn and the divine Cecil Beaton designs is unquestionably iconic. I side with Cary Grant, who, asked to play Henry Higgins, famously said that not only would he not accept the part, but unless Rex Harrison repeated his Broadway performance on screen, he wouldn’t even go to see it.

In my dreams, though, I try to imagine a version with Grant opposite Harrison’s Broadway co-star, Julie Andrews. It would have been great. And so, just as the plays of Shakespeare are constantly new again for each generation, so can other stories. We saw a terrific production of “A Comedy of Errors” last week, in a sort of fantasy Edwardian setting, with a opening act introducing us to a small modern-day British acting troupe who would be performing the play, so that the real life actors were playing contemporary actors playing an early 19th century version of a 16th century Shakespeare about confused identities. And don’t forget, Shakespeare was doing his own version of a play dating back to ancient Rome.

And of course “My Fair Lady” itself is the musical version of “Pygmalion” by George Bernard Shaw, inspired by an ancient Greek myth. “Pygmalion” was made into a wonderful film under Shaw’s personal supervision, with his choice to play Eliza, Wendy Hiller, and Leslie Howard as Higgins. I have always been fascinated by Shaw’s decision to chance the ending of his play for the movie version. In the afterward he wrote for the play, Shaw makes it very clear that Eliza and Higgins have no romantic future; he explicitly says that she marries the hapless but doting Freddie. After all, the story not a romance; it is about class and politics and religion and ideas — like all of Shaw’s work. But when it came time to write the screenplay for “Pygmalion,” he could not help reverting to the myth that inspired its title and at least leaves the door open for the idea that Eliza and Higgins fall in love, and that was carried over into “My Fair Lady.”

It is exactly one century since Shaw’s “Pygmalion” was written, and 55 years since “My Fair Lady” opened on Broadway. Shaw could never have imagined that class barriers would dissolve as much as they have. And yet, the play has enduring relevance and appeal. I think we’re due for another try, don’t you?

Just Go With It

Posted on February 11, 2011 at 7:00 am

The good news: no one in this movie has sex with an old lady or gets stabbed in the foot. So Adam Sandler is making some progress. And Jennifer Aniston continues to be a lovely screen presence, with sublime comic timing and underrated acting skills. There’s a surprise appearance by an Oscar-winning star who gives the much-too-long-time-in-coming third act a boost.

Now for the bad news: just about everything else. Adam Sandler and director Dennis Dugan have taken the delightful 1969 comedy “Cactus Flower” and dumbed it down, grossed it up, and draaaaaagggggged it out. It wastes its premise, insults its characters, and shows an attitude toward the audience somewhere between neglect and contempt, sometimes both.

Sandler plays Danny Macabee, a plastic surgeon who discovers on his wedding day in 1988 that his bride was a gold-digging tramp. He also discovers that pity and unavailability is a sure recipe for getting what I will politely call “dates” with beautiful ladies. And he spends the next 23 years using a fake wedding ring and even faker tales of marital woe to sleep with an entire generation of women who are beautiful and compassionate but not very smart.

And then he meets Palmer (Brooklyn Decker), a sweet, smart, schoolteacher with the body of a Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue supermodel. But she discovers his ring and is hurt and angry. Rather than tell her the truth, that he is a hopeless cad who uses and exploits women, he decides to tell her he is getting divorced. She insists on meeting the wife to verify his story, and he enlists his office assistant Katherine (Aniston), a single mother, to act the part. Eventually, her children get caught up in the deception, and just as Katherine is fed up and about to tell Palmer the truth, she runs into an old friend and has her own reasons for wanting to appear happily married.

Following in the dishonorable tradition of “Couples Retreat,” this movie seems to have been generated by Sandler’s sole priority: a free trip to Hawaii. Side benefits: a reason for two of the world’s most beautiful women to gaze at him adoringly, walk around in bikinis, and kiss him; and doing as little work as possible. It’s one thing for a young man to be an immature slacker. Sandler is far too old for this. Both the actor and his character come across as doughy, louche, and charmless.

Bizarrely, Sandler seems to have no idea of how odious the behavior of his characters is, perhaps because audiences have been acting as enablers by continuing to buy tickets, failing to notice that he ran out of comic steam a long time ago. There is a disagreeable misogynistic and materialistic ugliness to the film. Macabee is a plastic surgeon just so there can be jokes about grotesque mishaps — Rachel Dratch as a woman with one eyebrow much higher than the other, Kevin Nealon as man with a face numb and paralyzed from Botox, some poor woman as the victim of a deflated breast implant who has to suffer an excruciating scene with Aniston and Sandler rubbing numbing cream on her nipples. The good guys in the movie, Katherine and her children, gouge Macabee out of tens of thousands of dollars of things with no sense of responsibility. Katherine is supposed to be devoted to her children but does not seem to care that she leaves her children with a negligent sitter. And then her worth is proven when she, too, turns out to look fabulous in a bikini, hardly a big reveal to anyone who has passed by People Magazine at the check-out counter. And everyone lies to and manipulates the perfectly nice Palmer. What is this supposed to show us? How are we supposed to care about these people?Not one but two characters assume idiotic accents for no reason. There is a scene involving mouth-to-mouth resuscitation of a sheep. There are many jokes about male body parts and many, many, many jokes about poop, a subject of much more fascination to the characters in the movie than anything else, followed distantly by jealousy, competition, acquisitiveness, bikinis, being contemptuous of anyone who is old or overweight or unattractive (except for Sandler), and being resentful toward people who look good in bikinis and thus make us feel acquisitive or jealous. Oh, and homophobia. Please, don’t go with it.

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Based on a play Comedy Remake Romance