A Hologram for the King

Posted on April 19, 2016 at 5:36 pm

B+

Lowest Recommended Age:	Mature High Schooler
MPAA Rating:	Rated R for some sexuality/nudity, language and brief drug use
Profanity:	Some strong language
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Drinking, drunkenness, drugs
Violence/ Scariness:	Some disturbing scenes relating to medical issues
Diversity Issues:	A theme of the movie
Date Released to Theaters:	April 22, 2016
Date Released to DVD:	August 8, 2016
Amazon.com ASIN:	B01GP4HSH2

“Hologram for the King” is an uneven but engaging and always-watchable film based on the book by Dave Eggers. Like Arthur Miller, David Mamet, and many others, Eggers chose a salesman as a central figure and metaphor to illustrate the mixture of optimism, determination, and despair that is the Sisyphean life of someone whose job is to take no after no after no and keep coming back.

Tom Hanks plays Alan Clay, who has all the people skills of a lifelong salesman and all the desperation of a man who has one last chance to make a deal. He is under intense pressure from his ex-wife and his boss. His daughter has had to take time off from college because he cannot pay the tuition, and her kindness and encouragement just make him more desperate to get the money to get her back in school. And there is a troubling lump on his back that he is not prepared to confront until he

But what he has to sell is an elaborate hologram-based conference call system to the king of Saudi Arabia. Even with his advance team in place he discovers that the set-up is not what he expected. The extensive business and university complex he is hoping to service is not yet built beyond one huge office building. The advance team has been relegated to a tent with no food or wi-fi. And the king is not there and no one knows when he will be there or if he will ever be there.

Alan is so jet-lagged he keeps oversleeping and missing the shuttle, and so he gets transported back and forth day after day of pointless frustration by a genial “driver, guide, hero” named Yousef (Alexander Black). He tries everything he can think of to make progress but is always met with polite deferrals. Drunk one night, he tries to dig out the lump on his back himself and ends up in the hospital, where he is treated by a woman doctor named Zahra (Sarita Choudhury).

Metaphors usually work better in books than in films, and the effort to translate Eggers’ commentary on geopolitical and capitalistic forces like outsourcing is not always successful. But Hanks is ideal as the decent guy trying to do the best for everyone, with a long-practiced salesman’s ability to project good cheer and quiet competence. Director Tom Tykwer (“Run Lola Run”) brings a lot of vitality to the story, beginning with a captivating version of Hanks performing the Talking Heads song “Once in a Lifetime.” Choudhury is a warm, wise presence as the doctor trying to be true to herself despite the restrictions of the culture. Whether or not Alan makes the sale, he sells us on the value of trying to make things work.

Parents should know that this film includes very strong language, some disturbing images and health issues, drinking and drunkenness, sexual references and situations, and nudity.

Family discussion: What should Alan have done at Schwinn? What qualities made him good at his job?

If you like this, try: “Up in the Air”

Everybody Wants Some!!

Posted on March 31, 2016 at 5:10 pm

A+

Lowest Recommended Age:	Preschool
MPAA Rating:	Rated R for language throughout, sexual content, drug use and some nudity
Profanity:	Constant very strong and crude language
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Drinking, drugs
Violence/ Scariness:	None
Diversity Issues:	None
Date Released to Theaters:	April 1, 2016

“Everybody Wants Some!!,” the “spiritual sequel” to Richard Linklater’s Dazed and Confused, is so much fun that it is easy to overlook how sweet it is and how smart it is. Those who are hoping for the same combination of slightly smug nostalgia, outrageous partying, smart, self-aware characters including at least one who is older than the others but prefers to hang out with teenagers, almost no grown-ups, and a superbly curated soundtrack will find all of that. Like “Dazed and Confused,” the title comes from a rock song with some smokin’ guitar licks, this one, two exclamation points and all, by Van Halen. But this film is subtler, more ambitious, heir not just to “Dazed and Confused” but also to Linklater’s impressionistic, existentialist film “Waking Life,” and even to his “Before” trilogy as well.

As in the earlier film, the time period is compressed. “Dazed and Confused” took place on the last day of high school. “Everybody Wants Some!!” takes place on the weekend before classes start at an unnamed Texas college. It opens with freshman Jake (Blake Jenner) driving to school in a convertible, blasting — of course — “My Sharona.” Welcome to 1980.

Jake is about to move into the house set aside for the members of the school’s baseball team, nationally ranked and the heroes of the school. (Linklater played college baseball for two years at Sam Houston State University.) As soon as he arrives and introduces himself to his new teammates, the dynamic that plays out through the rest of the film is established. These guys are athletes, so they are very competitive as individuals but also very aware that in order to be successful as a team they have to be competitive in a way that helps the team. Linklater and his exceptional young cast, all of whom had to audition both for acting and for ability to play baseball, perfectly capture the endless jockeying for position combined with an instinctive teamwork based on constant assessment of one another. They use a made-up word I can’t quote here to describe the way their physical and verbal interaction combines one-upmanship and more benign getting-to-know-you high spirits, both instinctively team building.

Not much happens in the movie, at least on the surface. The guys hang out and talk. There’s a ping pong game, some locker room hijinks, ingestion of various mood-altering substances, and of course a lot of discussion about and pursuit of the ladies. This leads them to several different venues and it is a lot of fun to see them adapt (including changes of clothes) as they go from a disco to a “kicker” (country music) bar, to a punk performance and finally a costume party given by the drama students.

But this is not the usual college comedy, thankfully avoiding the usual humiliation and clunky life lessons. The incoming freshmen are (mostly) smart, self-aware, and curious. The women (mostly) are not significant enough to merit much in the way of personality or storyline, and the male characters may tend to objectify or exploit them but the movie does not. They are smart, capable, looking for a good time, and self-aware, and the one we spend time with (Zoey Deutch, in a lovely performance as a drama student named Beverly) has a walk-and-talk (and float) conversation with Jake that reminds us this is a film from the writer/director of “Before Sunrise.”

The entire cast is superb, especially Jenner (“The Glee Project”), Wyatt Russell (“22 Jump Street”) as a transferring senior with a taste for philosophy and weed, Glenn Powell (“Expendables 3”) as the smooth-talking Finnigan, and J. Quinton Johnson as Dale, who is willing to explain to the newcomers what is going on.

Not much seems to be happening as the characters go from one party to another, but it does in fact cover a surprising range of ideas with a great deal of insight. It is a “spiritual sequel” in literal terms, if not grappling with then at least pondering the meaning of existence and the existence of meaning. The utterly perfect final shot brings that home perfectly.

As the characters keep changing their clothes to fit in at each venue, they ask themselves whether they are pretending or adapting. Jake talks about how each of them had always been the best baseball player at home, only to come to college and share a team with an entire group of best players. The guys think about who they are and what their goals are (hey, it’s a college movie; you know what their goal is, but there’s more there, too).

It takes place over a few days but Linklater’s perspective on existence, meaning, and the passage of time is subtly interwoven between the bong hits and the hitting of various balls. As the young baseball players reckon with their future prospects (and dream up a possible scout for the pros who could be hiding anywhere), they and we know that, like the movie itself, their time playing baseball is brief, and that’s all the more reason to enjoy the show.

NOTE: Stay through the credits to see a delightful musical number created by the cast

Parents should know that this film includes very strong and crude language, extensive partying with drinking and drugs, sexual references and situations, and nudity.

Family discussion: Did the guys’ competition with each other help or hurt the team? What are the biggest differences between what went on here and what would happen today?

If you like this, try: “Dazed and Confused,” “Waking Life,” and “Before Sunset” from the same writer/director

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”

Smile of the Week: A Short Poem About Late-Life Love

Posted on March 12, 2016 at 8:01 am

“Love — the only reason that we’re alive.”

How to be Single

Posted on February 11, 2016 at 5:40 pm

Drew Barrymore — you know I love you but how does your Flower Films production company produce a film about female friendship and empowerment that barely passes the Bechdel test?

And did we really need a thinly disguised remake of “He’s Just Not That Into You?” I know it’s Valentine’s Day and the time feels right for a girls’ night out movie, but despite its entertaining moments, I’d go for “Star Wars” again over this.

Now, on to the entertaining moments. This is one of those “three girls looking for love” or “three girls looking for love or its close equivalent” stories with cute guys, cute clothes, cute apartments, cute problems, and cute pop songs on the soundtrack. Yes, get ready for “Worth It.” Again. It’s the new “I Feel Good.”

Alice (adorable Dakota Johnson) breaks up with her college boyfriend Josh (Nicholas Braun). She loves him, but they’ve been together four years and she does not know who she really is anymore. She needs to be on her own for a while, she tells him. It’s not a break-up; it’s just a break. Her new friend Robin (Rebel Wilson doing her usual shtick) reminds her that “Hey, Season Three Ross, there’s no such thing as being on a break.” Robin encourages her to drink, dance, and have meaningless sex with a cute bartender named Tom (Anders Holm of “The Intern”) who is the master of the one-night stand.

Alice has an older sister, Meg (Leslie Mann), an obstetrician who wants to have a baby. And then there is Lucy (Alison Brie), who lives above Tom’s bar and goes there to use his wi-fi to scroll through endless dating site profiles and complain about how DIFFICULT it is to find a presentable man who will COMMIT. This entire section is pretty much ripped off from the Justin Long/Ginnifer Goodwin part of “He’s Just Not That Into You” by the same screenwriters.

Johnson and Brie are adorable, and up-and-comer Jake Lacy (“Carol,” “Obvious Child”) is very appealing as one of Alice’s co-workers who likes Meg. But it is disappointing that it claims to be about the importance of taking responsibility for your own life and your own dreams, and apparently it is written by and very loosely based on a novel by women who are capable in jobs they find satisfying. But Alice seems to have no interest in her job as a paralegal and is as clueless about what it takes to be a professional as she is about even the most basic of daily tasks. She literally cannot dress herself. And learning to do so is portrayed as a major life achievement. Her romance with a handsome widower (an underused Damon Wayans, Jr.) makes little sense and her BFF relationship with Robin makes even less. In fact, there isn’t one relationship in the movie that makes us think they could have an actual conversation or even have much fun together.

“How to be Single” is more like a series of skits at a sorority slumber party than a story with characters. If Alice, Robin, Meg, and Lucy went out for a girls’ night at the movies, they’d choose something else.

Parents should know that this film includes very strong sexual content with many casual encounters, explicit sexual humor and sexual situations, and brief nudity, very strong and crude language, drinking and drugs.

Family discussion: What was the most important lesson Alice learned from each of the men she dated? Why did she listen to Robin?

If you like this, try: “He’s Just Not That Into You,” “Bridget Jones’ Diary,” and “Think Like a Man”

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