You probably already know the words, but it’s great to see them up on the big screen and it is really fun to sing along. For just one moment, we’re all students at Rydell High.
Tell me more!
Check here to see where it is playing and order tickets online as many shows are already sold out. If your city is not on the list, demand it!
NOTE: “Grease” was rated PG when it first came out, before the introduction of the PG-13 rating. It is now rated PG-13 for sexual content including references, teen smoking and drinking, and language. Parents should know that the themes include a possible teen pregnancy and the movie suggests that the way to get a boyfriend is to act like a tramp. This is all presented in a heightened, parody tone but it may be disturbing to younger audiences.
Robert Pattinson has gone from brooding, adoring Bella, saving Bella, and trying not to kill anyone in the Twilight movies to “Remember Me,” a J.D. Salinger-esque tale that has him brooding, adoring Ally (played by the vampire-esquely named Emilie de Ravin), saving various people, and trying not to kill anyone.
He plays Tyler, the son of a Wall Street tycoon (Pierce Brosnan) and big brother to the precocious Caroline (played by “Nurse Jackie’s” Ruby Jerins, and by far the film’s best and most interesting character). He is 21 and not quite in school, auditing courses. He meets Ally, but he does not tell her that the meeting was orchestrated by his roommate Aiden (Tate Ellington) as a part of an a vague and not very focused revenge plot. Her father, an angry cop (Chris Cooper) beat Tyler up and arrested them both when they got into a fight trying to defend some passers-by against some thugs.
Tyler and Ally begin to get acquainted and it turns out they have something in common. Ten years earlier, in 1991, she was with her mother in a subway station when she was murdered by two guys stealing her purse. And a few years earlier, on his 22nd birthday, Tyler’s older brother committed suicide. Tyler was the one who found him. Loss is isolating. It destroys our trust in the essential rightness of things. Tyler and Ally begin to find a way to feel connection, and hope.
Tyler is furious at his father for neglecting Caroline. Ally is furious at hers for striking her. This, too, connects them. And then, Ally finds out what led Tyler to approach her and feels betrayed. And then, some really bad stuff happens that will, depending on your age and inclination, will either seem deep and meaningful and transcendent or will seem manipulative and cheesy. I’m in that latter category.
There’s a lot to like in this film. The scenes with Tyler and Ally are touching and the Tyler’s relationship with Caroline feels warm and genuine. The first-filmed script by Will Fetters shows promise. Its rookie flaws are forgivable and its strengths show great promise.
“She’s Out of My League” recognizes that raunchiness is easy, but sweetness is the challenge. Making both parts of the equation work is something of a struggle but this movie comes closer than many.
The title says it all, and the mismatch of tone parallels the mismatch in the story. It’s a gender-reversed Cinderella story about a shlub who loves a goddess. And he has no idea what to do when it appears that she might just like him back. He cannot believe that he deserves her, and so of course he then does everything he can think of to prove he’s right by making the near-fatal mistake of taking the advice of his friends. The definitive response to this, of course, is still the scene in “Say Anything,” the quintessential she’s out of my league movie, where John Cusack responds to his friends’ awful advice: “If you guys know so much about women, how come you’re here at like the Gas ‘n’ Sip on a Saturday night completely alone drinking beers with no women anywhere?” Apparently, Kirk (Jay Baruchel of “Tropic Thunder” and “Nick and Nora’s Infinite Playlist”) never saw that movie because when one of his friends tells him that the way to a woman’s heart is to engage in an extreme makeover of a personal area, he goes for it all the way in an extended scene that somehow — see above — manages to become kind of sweet.
A lot of the credit goes to Baruchel, in his first romantic lead, as Kirk, the TSA security guy who works at the airport so he can dream of becoming a pilot, and Alice Eve as Molly, the impossibly beautiful dream girl who also happens to be smart, successful, kind-hearted, and able to somehow see more in Kirk than anyone else ever has. They never lose sight of the fact that this has to work as a romance as well as an over-the-top outrageous comedy, and that helps carry the audience through the slow patches. Unfortunately, it doesn’t to much to get us through the excruciating patches in which Kirk is subjected to a series of humiliating events, many featuring his embarrassingly obnoxious family and ex-girlfriend as well as various drawn-out mess-ups and recoveries and confrontations, ending, finally, in the inevitable race through the airport for a movie that never makes it off the ground.
An exceptionally strong cast makes this fantasy romantic comedy trifle pleasantly watchable despite its chick-lit conventions. Kristen Bell is Beth, the (of course) supremely competent museum “curator,” who is so devoted to her work that she has never figured out the love thing. She is (of course) not just humiliatingly re-dumped by her ex (the always-engaging Lee Pace) in the middle of a big art gala but — just to make this a major chick-flick tragedy — she also breaks the heel of her boot at the same time. And she has a mean boss (Anjelica Houston). This officially makes her the Cinderella of the movie.
Enter Prince Charming, late and with a loud and inappropriate ringtone. That’s Josh Duhamel as Nick, who is some sort of sportswriter. And they meet at a ball, or close enough, the grand wedding of Beth’s sister to a gorgeous Italian she just met. No evil stepsisters here.) Maid of honor, meet best man. But Beth, all too ready to assume the worst about love, runs away from Nick as fast as her Louboutins can go, stopping to grab four coins from the Fountain of Love to show her defiance of all things romantic.
Enter the complication: it seems that if you remove a coin thrown by a man into the Fountain of Love, you become the object of his desire. So, back in New York and with the Big Gala coming up at the museum, Beth finds herself being something between stalked and chased by: Danny DeVito as the sausage king who sends her a basket of “encased meats,” Will Arnett as an artist who paints an enormous nude portrait of Beth on the side of a building, Jon (“Napoleon Dynamite”) Heder as a street magician who can make the audience’s patience and good will disappear, and Dax Shepherd as a guy who is unabashedly way too into himself.
There’s a lot wrong with this movie. Just for the record, I do not know what the people who made this film think curators do, but in this world party-planning for cultivation of donors seems to be Beth’s primary obligation. Anyone who works in any capacity at an art museum will have more edge and style to her clothes than Beth does, with a particularly unfortunate dress in the big denouement that looks like collision of two of the biggest fashion catastrophes of all time: the 1970’s and bridesmaid’s gowns. The movie promises much more humor from a tiny little car, some pratfalls, a confused priest, a museum exhibit about pain(!), a restaurant in the dark, the characteristics of the four suitors, and the entire premise than it delivers. But the deftness of Bell and especially Duhamel manages to make clumsiness seem a little romantic and rather sweet.
“Harlem Hostel” is an unpretentious little film about a group of friends who decide to turn a run-down brownstone into a youth hostel to make ends meet. At times the film looks as low-budget as its setting, but with an appealing cast and a better-than-average script with a touch of sweetness, this is worth a look.
Want to give it a try? The first four people to send me an email at moviemom@moviemom.com with “Harlem” in the subject line will win a DVD.
NOTE: DVDs provided by the studio; all opinions are my own.
