The Invention of Lying

Posted on January 19, 2010 at 8:00 am

Ricky Gervais has come up with a fresh and enticing premise but — I have to be honest — it is imperfectly executed. It has the gloss of a romantic comedy because it gives us the fun of knowing that the couple will end up together long before they figure it out for themselves. But it also takes on some very big issues and has some surprising insights.

Gervais has imagined a world that looks exactly like ours, except that the people can only tell the concrete, literal truth. That means that they always say exactly what is on their minds, most of which is, to be brutally frank, brutally frank. This is not a crowd you want to ask whether these pants make you look fat.

And so when Mark (Gervais, who also co-wrote and co-directed) goes out on a date with a woman he has had a crush on named Anna (Jennifer Garner), she tells him up front that he is not in her league. He is repeatedly told that he is fat, dull, and unappealing. And then he is fired from his job as a screenwriter. But since fiction is a form of lying, all of this world’s movies are merely footage of people sitting in chairs reading aloud text about historical events. Mark, assigned to the 13th century, is fired because the only thing he can write “movies” about is the black plague.

About to be evicted because he cannot pay the rent, Mark goes to the bank to close out his account and the movie’s title event occurs. He informs the teller that he has more money than the bank’s computers show. And since no lie has ever occurred in this world, the teller believes him. Mark is thrilled with this new power, especially when he discovers he can ease his mother’s passing at what our world would politely call a nursing home but in no-lie world is identified with a sign that reads “A Sad Place for Hopeless Old People.” She is upset because she does not know what happens after death, so he tells her that she will be in a place where everything is loving and plentiful and she will be reunited with everyone she has loved. She dies in peace and the doctor and nurses who overheard want to know more. And soon Mark’s new ability to imagine gets him his job back and everyone wants to hear all about heaven and the “Man in the Sky.”

Gervais is not as imaginative as a director as he is as a writer but we get to see what a subtle and even moving actor he has become. The flatness of delivery of the no-lie world is a challenge for the cast, including comedian Louis C.K., Jason Bateman, Rob Lowe (looking unnecessarily seedy), Tina Fey, the inescapable Jonah Hill, and John Hodgman, and the talented Nathan Corddry and Christopher Guest are on screen too briefly to make much of an impression. Jennifer Garner is a great pleasure, as always, giving us a chance to see the wistful longing for something she cannot define because it is beyond her ability to conceive.

Amid the jokes (just imagine what soda ads look like in a world without exaggeration and implication) there are some provocative and meaningful insights. Lies are impossible without abstraction and the ability to imagine. And so is fiction. And so is faith. And even love. Without the ability to conceive abstraction, marriage is only about genetic superiority. There is no kindness, no compassion, no real understanding.

Some audience members will be uncomfortable at the suggestion that God is portrayed as a lie but this underestimates the film. While Gervais is an acknowledged atheist, the movie does not have to be seen that way. The emptiness of the lives of the people in a world devoid of anything but the literal truth and the way they are enthralled with the concepts of faith and meaning argue just the opposite. Just because someone lies about something does not change the underlying reality. Watch Gervais’ face as Mark uses his new ability to depart from concrete truth to provide encouragement and inspiration, and enjoy a comedy that may be about the invention of lying but knows how to tell the truth.

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Post Grad

Posted on January 12, 2010 at 8:00 am

There is not one single thing in this movie that you don’t see or guess from the trailer, but for some audiences that means that it will deliver just what they are looking for.

Alexis Bledel plays Ryden, who thinks the hard part is over because she is graduating from a good school with an excellent record and has lined up an interview for the job of her dreams at a publishing house. But she discovers that, as her father says, “the world doesn’t play by the rules.” Everything is messier and harder to control than she thought. She soon finds herself living back at home with her parents and going on an excruciating series of job interviews only to be subjected to an even more excruciating series of rejections. And to make it all worse, her rival at school (played with zesty mean-girl brio by Catherine Reitman) seems to have effortlessly taken over the life she thought she was supposed to have.

To add to the confusion, there is a handsome and devoted friend who wants to be more (“Friday Night Lights'” Zach Gilford), a handsome next door neighbor who is accomplished, sophisticated, and exotic (Rodrigo Santoro), and an assortment of quirky family problems from her assorted quirky family members.

The most creative part of the film may be the opening credits, as we watch Ryden’s vlog and she tells about her plans. After that, it’s pretty much by the book.

It’s nice to see Michael Keaton back on screen, and the always-watchable Jane Lynch makes the most of the underwritten role of Ryden’s mother. Carol Burnett lugs around an oxygen tank as the irascible grandmother, with her face oddly stretched and kind of spooky. At times the film’s disjointed, almost random moments help to make it feel less formulaic. Santiago and Reitman are more vivid and interesting than any of the main characters, throwing it all off-kilter. And then it takes a predictable, but retro turn that will leave audiences feeling unsatisfied and even cheated. The folks who made this movie need to go back to school and study a little harder.

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Comedy Family Issues Romance

I Can Do Bad All By Myself

Posted on January 11, 2010 at 12:00 pm

Tyler Perry’s movies are review-proof. Not just because he does not let critics see them before they are released, knowing that his audience won’t care about reviews, but because they do not lend themselves to the usual kind of analysis. They are not the usual kind of movie. They don’t fit into any category except their own: Tyler Perry movie. And as his wildly enthusiastic and utterly devoted fans know, that means a walloping portion of high drama and low comedy, with suffering women who are afraid to trust and very hunky men who are good with their hands, endlessly patient and thoughtful and — in both senses of the word — faithful.

Taraji P. Henson plays April, who lives in a decaying house she inherited from her father, and shuts the door on rooms that are about to collapse rather than trying to repair them. She supplements what she earns by singing at a tiny club with support from her married boyfriend (Brian White). Madea (Perry) catches April’s 16-year-old niece and two younger nephews trying to rob her house. She feeds them, scolds them, and delivers them to April, who has no interest in taking care of anyone, even herself. They are the children of April’s sister, who died of a drug overdose, and they have been cared for by April’s mother, who has disappeared. April is a bit slow on the uptake about what could have happened to her mother, which gives the story a few days for everyone to get acquainted, including a recent immigrant named Sandino (Adam Rodriguez) who is conveniently enough a handyman installed in the house by the kindly preacher around the corner (real-life pastor and gospel great Marvin Winans).

April’s one friend is Tanya (Mary J. Blige) and there is a woman from the church named Wilma who knows April’s mother (Gladys Knight). This gives the film an opportunity for some raise-the roof singing and praise, including the title number. Pastor Winans lends his voice to a heartfelt “Just Don’t Wanna Know/Over it Now,” and we believe that April, hearing it through her window, is genuinely moved by its powerful message. The songs and Henson’s sensitive portrayal of the woman who has neglected herself and her home keep us involved.

Some audiences object to Perry’s portrayal of the popular character Madea, calling her an exaggerated caricature or an embarrassing stereotype. But Perry knows that she provides some counterpoint to the melodrama, in this case including drug abuse, adultery, child molestation, and disability. I am far more troubled by the stereotypes in films like “Friday After Next,” “The Cookout,” and “Next Day Air” than in Perry’s films, which always include an assortment of thoughtful and responsible characters. A little comic relief with Madea’s jumbled-up Bible stories keeps things from getting overheated and reminds us that life — and families — are always a jumble of good, bad, wicked, kind, and silly.

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Drama Family Issues Romance

Sherlock Holmes

Posted on December 24, 2009 at 5:01 pm

Lowest Recommended Age:	Middle School
MPAA Rating:	Rated PG-13 for intense sequences of violence and action, some startling images and a scene of suggestive material
Profanity:	Some mild language
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Drinking, sedation
Violence/ Scariness:	Action violence, hanging, martial arts, guns, poison gas, and various Victorian weapons, explosions, some grotesque and grisly images including corpses
Diversity Issues:	Strong, independent, capable (if criminal) woman
Date Released to Theaters:	December 25, 2009

Perhaps even the great detective himself could not solve the mystery of why Sherlock Holmes holds the Guinness Book of World Records title for having been portrayed on screen than any other fictional character, with more than 75 actors in more than 200 movies. And it would be hard to find any movie and television detective who does not draw something from Holmes’ mastery of the power of observation (“Lie to Me,” “The Mentalist”). There is something endlessly fascinating about the idea that someone could look at us and see what others are hiding from us, and even about the idea that he could see what we are hiding, too.

So here we are again with another Sherlock Holmes, this one from Robert Downey, Jr. and director Guy Ritchie. And that means an edgier, grubbier, somewhat younger Holmes. While stage and screen versions of the stories have generally focused on Holmes as a sort of hyper-controlled super-brain with little emotion or physicality, this version expands on a reference in the original Arthur Conan Doyle texts to Holmes’ being adept at “baritsu,” a form of martial arts and has a two-fisted Holmes who fights bad guys and even mixes it up just for fun. It also focuses on the books’ notion that Holmes was good at detection because he was bad at everything else and that unless he was completely involved in a case he considered worth his attention he does not have any other way to interact with the world.

Dr. Watson, portrayed as a bit stuffy and more of a biographer than a partner for Holmes, in this version is played by the not-at-all-stuffy Jude Law as someone who struggles with his own demons (a gambling problem) and loves the adrenaline rush as well as the sense of justice and the fun of fighting along side his talented friend. But things are changing. He has met a woman he wants to marry and that means moving out of the flat on Baker Street he shares with Holmes and less time for crime-fighting.

Downey is always at his considerable best with a character who has some boundary issues and his Holmes is as taut as the violin strings he plucks between cases. His eyes are the most expressive on screen since Al Pacino, large, liquid, knowing. Downey conveys the almost compulsive, almost Aspergers aspects of the Holmes character. In one scene, he waits for Watson at a restaurant, unable to stop noticing the dark, the sad, the painful at the tables around him. He seems to drink it all in through his eyes, ears, and pores on his skin. And his need to understand and conquer the worst of humanity outside him seems connected to a struggle within himself — and between him and Irene Adler, for Sherlock Holmes, Conan Doyle wrote, “the woman.” Here she is deliciously played by Rachel McAdams, suiting his description of Irene as having “the face of the most beautiful of women, and the mind of the most resolute of men,” and fetching in bustle and boy-clothes.

Production designer Sarah Greenwood has done a magnificent job of creating Victorian London and part of the fun is seeing some of the now-iconic structures still under construction — always a handy place for a fight scene, too. Ritchie’s kinetic camerawork lends a muscular energy that keeps the story from feeling antique. And getting used to a young, energetic Holmes who can throw a punch is not as difficult as you might think.

But other parts of the movie do not work as well. Ritchie, whose best films celebrate the gritty underworld of big and small-time crooks, seems to be more comfortable for some of the mid-level thieves, arsonists, and hoodlums Holmes and Watson run into, and every time they leave the scene a little bit of the life of the film goes with them. Mark Strong is not given nearly enough to do as the villain (titled, of course) and the mystery is not clever enough to make the resolution satisfying. You don’t have to be a super-sleuth to see the holes in the plot. Downey is better detecting than he is trading odd couple banter with Law, but so would anyone. Who could have imagined that in a Sherlock Holmes movie the fight scenes replacing the deductions would ring truer than the dialogue replacing “Elementary, my dear Watson?”

500 Days of Summer

Posted on December 22, 2009 at 8:00 am

A-

Lowest Recommended Age:	High School
MPAA Rating:	Rated PG-13 for sexual material and language
Profanity:	Some strong language
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Drinking, characters get tipsy
Violence/ Scariness:	Emotional confrontations
Diversity Issues:	None
Date Released to Theaters:	July 17, 2009
Date Released to DVD:	December 22, 2009
Amazon.com ASIN:	B001UV4XUG

Like its winning hero, this movie wears its heart right on its sleeve. It lays it out for us right at the beginning, making it clear that “this is not a love story.” Oh, and it is a work of fiction. The usual disclaimer from the closing credits appears up front, letting us know that none of the characters should be confused with anyone in real life. Especially one named young woman in particular. Who is then described with an epithet often heard in a kennel.

It’s wrong about one thing; it is a love story. But that does not make it a happy love story. This is, as the narrator obligingly informs us, the story of Tom (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), who believes in love and believes that he will find true love and it will make him happy, and Summer (Zooey Deschanel), who does not believe in love and thinks that her 20’s should be about having fun. A match made in heaven? In the movies, maybe, but not this one.

It has been a long time, perhaps since “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind,” since a movie evoked the joys and pains of first love with such art and delicacy. We know from the title that the romance will last 500 days. The movie shows us that period thematically rather than chronologically so that we go from a day near the end of their relationship to a day near the beginning that explains what the later one was about. By the time we see those first, early moments of heady connection, we realize how the sweetness of those initial feelings will become almost unbearably poignant. In one encounter late in their relationship, when he comes to a party she is hosting, we see a split screen, one marked “expectation” and the other “reality.” The differences between them are subtle, but telling.

Director Marc Webb and screenwriters Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber think very cinematically, using the unique attributes of film to evoke the feelings and experiences of the characters. And Gordon-Levitt and Deschanel are two of the most appealing and talented young performers in Hollywood and they create characters who are vibrant and real. We may not know whether they will stay in love with each other, but the audience will fall in love with them.