Confessions of a Shopaholic

Posted on June 23, 2009 at 8:00 am

Even the endlessly talented and infinitely adorable Isla Fisher cannot overcome the script problems in this unfrothy romantic comedy about a writer who just can’t stop shopping. As hard as they try to make her irresistable, the character she plays is careless, thoughtless, and untrustworthy. And yet, everyone in the movie seems to be utterly won over by her, making the disconnect between the reactions of the audience and the reactions of the characters more and more jarring.

Fisher plays Rebecca, who was forever blighted by her parents’ penny-pinching. She wanted sparkly and colorful but her mother always bought brown and sensible. So she has grown up into a woman who cannot resist that most magical of siren’s refrains: “SALE.” They are not kidding about the “aholic” part of the title. Like any addict, she is in denial about the way in which her addiction has affected her life and the lives of those around her. She mooches off of her best friend and roommate (a delightful Krysten Ritter as Suze) and constantly lies to everyone, including herself. She goes to great lengths to avoid those nasty people who keep calling her because, oh yes, she does not pay her bills. It is supposed to be charming and funny that racing to the interview for what she says is the job of her dreams she is waylaid by a $120 green scarf, which she pays for with a combination of cash, several credit cards, and what amounts to attempted check-kiting that turns into a straight-on con, based on a gabbled story about a sick aunt. And who turns out to be on the other side of the desk in the interview? Yes, the con-ee himself, the handsome editor (Hugh Dancy in another Prince Charming role as Luke). An all-star supporting cast includes Kristen Scott Thomas as an imperious fashion editor and Julie Hagarty channeling Miss Jane from “The Beverly Hillbillies” as Luke’s assistant.

It is always a mistake for a movie to be more in love with its heroine than the audience is. A little romantic fantasy is welcome but here it reaches absurd levels as the most selfish and irresponsible behavior by Rebbecca produces coos of ecstasy from everyone. She instantly becomes an international sensation with a frivolous article using shoes as a metaphor for personal finance. And preposterously, when she finally begins to accept some responsibility for the mess she has made, the movie wants us to be on her side when she undercuts her inexcusably overdue payment with a silly prank. Fisher should have shopped around for a better script.

Related Tags:

He’s Just Not That Into You

Posted on June 2, 2009 at 8:00 am

It turns out that it all goes back to the playground. What did our moms tell us when boys teased us and knocked us down? “He only does it because he likes you!” This leads to two consequences. First, women lose the ability to apply common sense in interpreting the signals about level of interest sent by men. Second, men get positive reinforcement for sending those mixed signals. Add in a couple of doses of fear of getting hurt and fear of being alone, and a just a dash of fear of missing out on The One and you have “He’s Just Not That Into You,” a movie inspired by a non-fiction book inspired by one line on the television series “Sex and the City.”

On that episode, a man named Berger (Ron Livingston) took pity on a character who was coming up with increasingly far-fetched excuses for a man’s turning down her invitation to come up to her apartment after a date. “He’s just not that into you,” said Berger. This was a revelation. The episode attracted so much attention it led to a non-fiction book (written by a male-female team), and that led to this daisy-chain of stories about love old and new, sweet and sad, funny and wise.

At the heart of the story is Gigi (“Big Love’s” Ginnifer Goodwin), an ever-hopeful sort who is always willing to see the glass as half full even if there is nothing in it at all. He hasn’t called? He’s busy at work or he had a sudden business trip. Or maybe he forgot her number. She is helped in this romantic delusion by her friends, who try to cheer her up by persuading her that men behave like this all the time when they are interested and they always have these hopeful little urban legends about someone’s second cousin’s college roommate who thought that a guy wasn’t calling but then they got married and lived happily ever after.

It takes a cynical bar manager named Alex (Justin Long) to give Gigi the movie title advice, and that leads to some more bracing honestly. It all boils down to this: the only signal that matters is the choices people actually make. If he wants to talk to you, he will call. If he wants to see you, he will make it unequivocally clear. Same for women, by the way.

Meanwhile, a young married couple (Jennifer Connelly and Bradley Cooper) is dealing with stress on two levels, external and internal. Their new home is being completely gutted and renovated. And he is feeling attracted to a vixenish young singer (Scarlett Johansson) and to the possibilities of a life without constraints and promises. An ad saleswoman for a gay men’s newspaper (co-producer Drew Barrymore) says that modern technology has just created more ways to keep from talking to each other — email, texting, voicemail, and myspace. She gets a lot of support and some good advice from her sympathetic co-workers. And another couple (Jennifer Aniston and Ben Affleck) gets along just fine on every issue except for one — she wants to get married and he does not.

You will get a sense for which side this film takes in the gender wars when you look at the cast — the big names and familiar faces are mostly on the female side. But the performers are all attractive and capable and director Ken Kwapis (“Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants”) knows how to keep several stories going at once. He manages his talented cast well and he skillfully handles the material so that it stays comic without losing sympathy for the characters. The film balances humor with some sharply observed moments and painfully familiar conversations that are sure to provoke some lively debates on the way home from the theater.

Related Tags:

Based on a book Comedy Romance

New In Town

Posted on May 26, 2009 at 8:00 am

Despite the title, there is nothing at all new about this romantic comedy, but it manages to endear itself anyway.

RenÃ©e Zellweger plays uptight and ambitious Lucy Hill, an ambitious, stiletto heel-wearing executive based in Miami who thinks she can get a promotion by taking on a new assignment to oversee the retrofitting and downsizing of a manufacturing plant in Minnesota. As she discovers over and over, she is clearer on the theory than the reality, starting with concepts like “cold” and “snow.” And “factory” and “downsizing.” Casual decisions about eliminating jobs are a lot easier when looking at budgets and bar charts, not people.

The people Lucy meets in the small town of New Ulm are straight from the Ma and Pa Kettle school of movie country folk: cute, quirky, corny, colorful, and sometimes cantankerous. They are given to expressions like “Oh, cry in my cheese-beer soup!” And of course there is the handsome single dad (Harry Connick, Jr. as Ted) with whom Lucy will have to get off on the wrong (stiletto-clad) foot before discovering an unexpected (only to her) connection.

What works here is the easy chemistry between the two leads (despite the distraction of whatever Zellweger has done to her face). While it may seem at first as though the film is making fun of the locals, it is Lucy who takes most of the literal and metaphoric pratfalls. The film shows an unusual level of respect in a mainstream film for the New Ulmers’ religious faith, sense of community, generosity, and resilience. Both sides have to adjust their assumptions and discard their prejudices, but making Lucy’s journey the steeper climb gives the story some added sweetness. There may be nothing new here, but like one character’s favorite recipe, sometimes bland can still be tasty.

Related Tags:

Comedy Date movie Romance

Connie and Carla

Posted on May 18, 2009 at 8:00 am

B+

Lowest Recommended Age:	Mature High Schooler
MPAA Rating:	Rated PG-13 for thematic elements, sexual humor and drug references
Profanity:	Some strong language and double entendres
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Characters drink to respond to stress, scenes in bar
Violence/ Scariness:	Character killed, mostly comic violence
Diversity Issues:	A theme of the movie
Date Released to Theaters:	2004
Date Released to DVD:	2005
Amazon.com ASIN:	B00005JN1K

Nia Vardalos captivated audiences with the unstoppably successful My Big Fat Greek Wedding and her next film opens up in a few weeks. So it is a good time to take a look at her last film, which never got the audience it deserved. It is very entertaining, if less broadly appealing than her blockbuster debut. What made her first film a hit was its fresh and unassuming presentation of a universal theme — families drive everyone a little crazy. This one is a more traditional farce with the always-reliable gender-switching theme. It worked for Shakespeare and it worked for “Charlie’s Aunt,” “Some Like it Hot,” and “Tootsie,” and if this movie doesn’t hit that level, it avoids the mistakes of flops like “Sorority Boys” and “Juwanna Mann.”

Vardalos and Toni Collette (“The Sixth Sense” and “Muriel’s Wedding”) play best friends who dream of starring in dinner theater productions of Broadway shows. Instead, they are waitresses at an O’Hare airport restaurant who get to belt out tunes to stranded travellers in between taking orders. One night bad guys shoot their boss over a drug deal and, when they see Connie and Carla watching, they try to kill them, too. So Connie and Carla have got fo find a place to hide. Cue “Born to be Wild” and point the station wagon to Los Angeles.

And then before you can say “Queer Eye on the Girls from the Heartland,” Connie and Carla disguise themselves as drag queens and get a job performing in a nightclub. And they are wildly successful because they finally found an audience that appreciates Broadway show tunes! Connie starts to fall for the handsome brother (David Duchovney) of one of the drag queens, Carla misses her boyfriend, and those bad guys are still trying to find them….but these are girls who know how to deliver a happy ending.

This is a bright and colorful door-slamming farce directed by Michael Lembeck, whose experience with “Friends” keeps the pace so brisk that there isn’t much time to notice the parts that don’t work. The plot is nothing new — Lucy and Ethel would be right at home — but there are some good lines given maximum punch by a strong cast.

Duchovney’s low-key charm works well in the midst of all of the over-the-top emoting, but it is a shame that the plot requires him to be so squeamish about his brother’s lifestyle. The movie’s biggest weakness is its attempt to be just too, too good to the last drop, sprinkling self-esteem over every person who comes on screen like, well, fairy dust. This movie is going to make sure you get the message. Like the two main characters, it throws everything at you it can think of, from shameless power ballads to a real old-time movie star. The song and dance routines really are a hoot, delivered with such affectionate sincerity that I dare you not to be entertained. Yet what it does best is what it does most quietly, with some understated humor about how everyone, even a hitman for the mob, is just one showtune away from discovering the transcendent power of dinner theater.

Parents should know that many of the characters in this movie are drag queens, although as is typical in movies of this kind, they are portrayed as non-sexual. Parents should also know that characters use some strong language and there are some double entrendre sexual references and crude jokes involving tampons and a “sit on my face” insult. Characters respond to a stressful situation by deciding to get drunk and much of the action takes place in a bar. A character is a drug dealer and the response to accidental use of cocaine is portrayed as humorous. A character is a hitman and there is one murder (off camera). There are fights, mostly comic. A strength of the movie is that prejudice against drag queens and anyone who is different is an important theme.

Many families may find this movie a good starting point for discussions of how we know who we are and how we treat those who are different. They might want to talk about why it is easier for the drag queens to feel good about the way they look than it is for the women that Connie and Carla see.

Families who enjoy this movie will also enjoy some of the other classic cross-dressing comedies including Tootsie and Some Like It Hot and drag queen comedies like The Birdcage, Victor/Victoria, The Adventures of Priscilla Queen of the Desert, Outrageous!, and To Wong Foo Thanks for Everything Julie Newmar (all with some mature material).

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

Posted on May 12, 2009 at 8:00 am

Brad Pitt is a very fine actor (see “Twelve Monkeys” and “True Romance”) but in this epic fantasy his diligent and thoughtful performance contributes less to the film than his appearance, about two-thirds of the way through. I mean appearance in the broadest sense. It is not until that point that we feel that the Pitt we have been waiting for shows up on screen. And it is at that moment that Pitt’s appearance, meaning his golden movie star beauty, provides the essential jolt that propels the story forward into its final, heart-wrenching conclusion.

It takes its title from a story by F. Scott Fitzgerald about a man who lives his life backwards, born as an old man and getting younger every day. The movie begins with both of its main characters very, very old. One is Daisy (Cate Blanchett), dying in a hospital, with her daughter standing vigil. Daisy asks her daughter to read aloud from an old diary and we go back to the Armistice, the end of World War I. A baby is born and his mother dies in childbirth. The father is horrified by the child and leaves him on the doorstep of a home for the elderly where he is adopted by Queenie (the marvelous Taraji P. Henson), who works at the home. At first he seems like an exceptionally ugly baby. And then as he gets older he seems to be disabled. A nursing home is a perfect environment for young Benjamin Button. He’s just another person who needs help. He is raised in an atmosphere of unconditional love and acceptance and grows up to have a gentle and observant nature.

One day a little girl comes to visit her grandmother. It is Daisy. Benjamin looks like a very old man but he is really a little boy and he wants to play with her. As she grows up, he gets younger, but there are still decades between them. Benjamin leaves the nursing home to work on a ship and writes to Daisy from around the world.

The digital effects are very well done and by this time Pitt starts to become more recognizable, so almost-familiar that we almost believe that this is the way he looks now, that he’s getting a little older like the rest of us. And then, all of a sudden, there he is, the wind brushing his hair, a burnished glow on, around, and coming from him, the very personification of youth and promise and every possible kind of yes. Our hearts ache with the bittersweet longing for what he has that no one ever will, the look and energy of youth with the wisdom and experience of age. And then they ache again with what he shares with us and every human, the awareness of how brief it all really is and the need for connection to transcend life’s limits.

This is a film with the scope and reach of almost a century but its power comes from the smallest gestures and the simplest moments. And its ultimate conclusion is one of the most powerful and moving of the year.