A Very Harold & Kumar 3D Christmas

Posted on November 5, 2011 at 6:56 pm

I was pretty sure that the line between being lame and making fun of being lame was fairly distinct but in this film Harold (John Cho) and Kumar (Kal Penn) push it so hard it almost dissolves. We’ve all come a long way since the original film came out in 2004 and charmed everyone with the unpretentiousness of its protagonists’ aspirations (they just wanted some of those scrumptious square burgers from White Castle) and its own (silly stoner fun). The sequel in 2008 brought in a politics by taking our heroes to Guantanamo prison and a meeting with the President. And now they’re back.

Harold has moved on. He is married to the beautiful Maria (Paula Garces) and has a beautiful home and a fancy job on Wall Street. He even has an obsequious assistant.

What he doesn’t have is the respect of his father-in-law (the scary Danny Trejo) or his old friend. Harold hangs out with a dweeby new friend, now, and his name is Todd (Tom Lennon). He and Kumar have gone their separate ways and never see each other.

Kumar has been kicked out of med school for failing a drug test. His girlfriend has left him. All he has left is a weed habit and a dweeby new friend, Adrian (Amir Blumenfeld). He and Harold have nothing in common anymore. But when he brings Harold a package that was delivered to their old apartment and accidentally sets Harold’s father-in-law’s prize Christmas tree on fire, they team up again to find a replacement and go on a journey that will include drugs, nudity, a claymation interlude, a song and dance from Neil Patrick Harris (worth the price of admission as a demented version of himself, singing and dancing and explaining that the gay thing is just a ruse to help him get more girls), more drugs including marijuana smoke in 3D that floats out into the theater, 3D jokes, hot nude nuns, Russian gangsters, and a drug-taking baby.

It hasn’t quite jumped the doobie yet, but the shtick is getting tired. Things that were funny in a college kid are not so funny when they get older and Kumar’s pudgy slacker-hood just seems sad. It’s as though they made a check-list of ways to be outrageous instead of letting the humor come naturally from the situations. When they and their characters were new to us we enjoyed the sense of discovery. But when they make jokes about Penn’s service in the White House and Harris is no longer a has-been but, thanks in part to the first movie, an Entertainment Weekly cover/J.J. Abrams musical-starring success, it feels phoned in and phony.

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3D Comedy Series/Sequel

Puss In Boots

Posted on October 27, 2011 at 6:00 pm

The popular feline bandit of the “Shrek” series gets his own feature film, one that is less of a fractured fairy tale and more of a swashbuckler. Antonio Banderas returns as the voice of Puss in Boots, the cat with the heart of a lion — and the eyes of a cute little kitty.

This is a prequel, set in a fanciful Spanish countryside, showing us Puss’ life as an orphan, his early friendship with Humpty Dumpty, the betrayal that led him to become an outlaw, and his efforts to find redemption.

“What can I say? I was a bad kitty,” he tells us as he bids farewell to a pretty feline whose name he can’t quite remember. He is “a fugitive from the law, searching for a way to clear my name.” He walks into a bar and silences the snickering caballeros, telling them, “You don’t want to make the cat angry.” He is looking for a way to score but he has his own set of values: no stealing from churches or orphans.

Magic beans, on the other hand, are another story, especially if they have already been stolen. And it turns out that the magic beans have special significance to Puss and to his old friend.

Puss makes a new friend, too, a hooded fellow thief who wants the same beans. At first, in a charmingly designed cat hide-out, they compete against each other with an hilarious dance-off. But then the thief removes the hood and is revealed to be the notorious Softpaw, a brilliant and beautiful female thief (voice of Banderas’ “Desperado” co-star Salma Heyek). And they are joined by Humpty, though their history makes it difficult for Puss to trust him.

The beans are magic, and the beanstalk takes them to a cloud-land where they find the goose that lays golden eggs. Or, as Softpaw puts it, “It’s a gold pooper; we’re taking it.” Will this be a chance for Puss to right past wrongs? Or will it just make him an even badder kitty?

Less visually striking, less funny, and less heart-warming than the Shrek movies and with completely unnecessary 3D, it is a step down for the series. The kitty hide-out and dance-off are well handled and there are some funny moments, but the death of a major character is too jarring for younger children. Puss is a better supporting player than a star.

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Johnny English Reborn

Posted on October 20, 2011 at 6:43 pm

The first Johnny English spy spoof came out in 2003. The spy parts were not exciting enough and the comedy parts were not funny enough to make material that has been done by everyone from James Coburn and Dean Martin to Mike Meyers and Jackie Chan seem fresh. And yet, he’s back — the movie no one much liked has a sequel no one asked for. There’s just one reason: people who do not speak English loved it. The original made a ton of money in countries where audiences could enjoy the pratfalls and ignore everything else. And so, passing through quickly on its way to being dubbed for international release, we have “Johnny English Reborn.”

Rowan Atkinson is best in small doses. Even at under two hours, this goes on much too long as it appears to go down a check-list of spy movie clichés, only to deploy jokes that are almost as well-worn. There is one great Parkour chase scene and a couple of genuinely funny moments but it drags on with Atkinson doing the same shtick over and over — the disconnect between his assessment of his capability (high) and his actual capability (low). And lots of crotch hits.

Someone has certainly watched a great many spy movies and so the settings replicate Bond staples like the snowy retreat, the men’s room, the secret headquarters, and the ashram. But like the first one, most of the action isn’t exciting and most of the jokes are not funny. Perhaps the dubbed version is better.

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Spy Kids: All the Time in the World 4D

Posted on August 20, 2011 at 10:53 pm

Jessica Alba was dressed for her role in Robert Rodriguez’s ultra-violent “Machete” when, on a break from filming, she stopped to change her baby’s diaper. Rodriguez says he saw her performing this most domestic of tasks in her action-movie attire and knew it was time to start up the “Spy Kids” series again, this time with Alba taking her baby with her on a mission.

The first Spy Kids was about Carmen and Juni Cortez (Alexa Vega and Daryl Sabara), children of super-spies who got caught up in the family business. It was sharp and funny and imaginative and made it clear that the real adventure is being part of a family. It was a rare film for audiences of any age with strong, smart female and Latino characters. And Rodriguez, known for his ultra-violent films for adults (“Once Upon a Time in Mexico,” “Machete”), kept the “Spy Kids” series refreshingly non-violent. If this fourth in the series is not as good as the first, it is better than the unfortunately titled Spy Kids 3D: Game Over. And much, much better than The Smurfs.

Alba plays Marissa Wilson, a spy who goes into labor in the middle of a chase but manages to capture the evil Time Keeper on her way to the delivery room. She quits to be a stay-at-home mom for the baby and her twin step-children, Cecil (Mason Cook) and Rebecca (Rowan Blanchard). Her husband Wilbur (a likable Joel McHale), has a “Spy Hunter” television show but somehow never figured out that his wife was not a decorator.

A year later, the Time Keeper is creating chaos and Marissa, the twins, and the baby are off to save the world and do some family bonding as well. The original spy kids, now grown up, arrive for some bad guy chasing and family conflict resolving as well.

Everyone gets a chance to know each other better, of course, but the film has a bit more substance. Cecil is hearing-impaired and he and everyone around him are completely comfortable with it. It is very rare in movies of any age that we get to see a character with a disability rather than a disability with a character. Cecil is a regular kid who happens to have hearing aids and Cook gives a nice comic snap to his comments. The gadgets are a lot of fun, including a robot dog with more functions than a Swiss Army Knife, hilariously voiced by Ricky Gervais, and “hammer hands” gloves that can punch through walls. Like all parents, Rodriguez is dismayed by the ever-quickening passage of time. So in the midst of the silliness with a “4 dimension” scratch and sniff card to accompany some of the story’s most odoriferous moments, a muddled storyline, and too much potty humor, there is a sweet theme about seizing the moment for what matters most.

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Rise of the Planet of the Apes

Posted on August 4, 2011 at 6:53 pm

By the time they got to the line, “Take your stinking paws off me, you damned, dirty ape!” I couldn’t help thinking, “Take your stinking paws off the franchise, Hollywood!” Do we really need another apes movie?

We do have one, though, and it’s good. We can skip over the way it departs from the explanation in the original films that humans (spoiler alert!) wipe ourselves out with nuclear war. The explanation in this prequel is better, more chilling, more visceral. James Franco plays Will, a dedicated pharmaceutical company medical researcher desperate to find a treatment for the Alzheimer’s that is stealing his father (John Lithgow) from him. The tests on a chimp are promising, but when a demonstration before the company’s board goes horribly wrong, the program is shut down and the chimps are killed. It turns out the test chimp was pregnant and gave birth to a baby before she was destroyed. Will brings the baby home to his father. They name him Caesar.

He meets or exceeds human development for the first few years. The changes caused in his mother by the experimental drug were passed on to him. But as happened in the real-life story of the chimp raised in a human home portrayed in the documentary, “Project Nim,” when he becomes strong and the hormones of puberty kick in, he can no longer live with Will. He is taken to a facility where the animals are abused by the staff (including Tom Felton, “Harry Potter’s” Draco Malfoy).

Will tries desperately to get Caesar back, as he works on an even more powerful drug to improve memory and cognitive ability. But the drug has some devastating consequences as well, and the movie’s niftiest twist is the way the two elements of elevating the apes and bringing down the humans are tied together.

After more than two months of superheroes and giant robots, it is nice to have a science fiction/fantasy film that thinks it’s a drama. Light on bombast and unexpectedly tender-spirited, the story is grounded in Will’s wanting to hold on to his father, a passion born of love and devotion that recklessly spills over into hubris. Greed, ignorance, and cruelty of others ignites the conflict. We see how increasing intellectual development affects strategy and decision-making, including deciding when it is time to break the rules. And we are reminded of how ruthless the process of the survival instinct in evolution can be, especially when humans are no longer the fittest.

There are some nice touches for fans of the series. A chimp plays with a Statue of Liberty and Charlton Heston, star of the original movie, appears on a television. We see the origin of the insignia that becomes meaningful to the ape-run society. But the deeper connection is to more, well, primal themes of freedom and justice. I kept thinking of the storming of the Bastille.

Andy Serkis, who did the motion capture body movements for Golum in the “Lord of the Rings” movies, provides the acting inside the CGI. Serkis gives a performance that brings Caesar’s expressive face and eyes to life. Even the whiz kids at WETA special effects still haven’t licked the gravity problem, though. The computer animated apes never quite feel as weighty as they should. But there are some stunning images as they swing through the trees and crash through windows. And when Caesar stands erect and looks Will directly in the eyes we may find ourselves wondering whose side we are on.

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