Agent Cody Banks

Posted on March 9, 2003 at 6:35 am

I took four young teenagers to this movie and they loved it. But I was not as impressed.

The idea is a cute one — but it was cuter when they did the same thing in two editions of “Spy Kids.” This version is mildly enjoyable, but suffers by comparison to those wildly imaginative and funny movies.

Frankie Muniz (“Malcolm in the Middle”) plays Cody Banks, a 15-year-old who has been attending a CIA-sponsored summer camp that has given him all the training he needs to be a junior secret agent. But when he gets his first assignment, to get close to Natalie (Hillary Duff, TV’s “Lizzie McGuire”), the daughter of a scientist, it turns out that $10 million of training that covered every detail of combat and espionage left out one detail — how to talk to girls.

So, Cody gets some quick and confusing lessons and then finds himself in a new school, trying to make friends with Natalie. He finally gets the hang of it just in time to save the day when she is kidnapped and taken to that most popular of spy movie destinations, the bad guy’s arctic secret lair.

Muniz and Duff are always fun to watch and there are some nice stunts, especially a skateboard rescue of a toddler in a runaway car and a snowboard entry into the aforementioned lair. Saturday Night Live’s Darryl Hammond is a lot of fun as the equivalent of James Bond’s “Q” character, the guy with all the gadgets. Angie Harmon does not have much to do except show up in a series of outfits more appropriate for Spy Barbie. And the movie wastes the time and talents of two of Hollywood’s best actors, Martin Donovan and Cynthia Stevenson, as parents of the teens in the lead roles. The story is lifted from a combination of “Dr. No” and the recent (and better) “Clockstoppers.” The movie won’t have much appeal to anyone outside the 10-16 demographic it is aimed at, but there are so few movies for that group that it does not seem fair to complain.

Parents should know that the movie has violence, including one grisly death by disintegration. Characters use some strong schoolyard language (“screwed up,” “play doctor,” “Are you in special ed?”) and there is a locker room scene in which a woman snatches the towel from a boy’s middle and snaps it at another boy’s crotch. (The flesh-colored underpants the boy was wearing under the towel are reassuringly evident.) The adult woman spy dresses like a comic book character, but she is strong and capable. The head of the CIA ia a black man. There is a joke about using the special x-ray glasses to peek at women’s underwear and an adult makes a joke about breasts. It is highly insensitive to have characters use “special ed” as an insult. Most troubling is that one of the young people in the movie is directly responsible for the death of a bad guy — usually, in movies for this age group, they are careful to have the bad guy killed as the result of his own actions, like falling off a building when he lunges for someone. Some audience members may be upset about this.

Families who see this movie should talk about whether they would like to be spies. They might want to check out the CIA’s website. I like the description of what they are looking for in spy candidates: “an adventurous spirit, a forceful personality, superior intellectual ability, toughness of mind, and a high degree of personal integrity, courage, and love of country. You will need to deal with fast-moving, ambiguous, and unstructured situations that will test your resourcefulness to the utmost.”

Families who enjoy this movie will also enjoy Spy Kids 1 and 2, Clockstoppers, and Big Fat Liar.

Related Tags:

Not specified

Adaptation

Posted on December 19, 2002 at 2:31 pm

There are people who care so passionately about something that it fills them up completely. And then there are the rest of us, who can never lose themselves that way, people who divide their interest and attention and always hold a little bit of themselves back to observe and judge.

“Adaptation,” like the book that inspired it, is about both kinds of people and the way that each sometimes longs to be in the other category. The book is The Orchid Thief by New Yorker author Susan Orlean. By nature, by culture — by definition — a writer is at the furthest end of the scale in the observer/judge category. Orlean begins to write about Lohn Laroche, a man who even by the fevered standards of those utterly captured by “orchidelerium” is utterly obsessed. She realizes that she is not just writing about Laroche or about orchids but about the nature of obsession itself. In a way, she becomes obsessed with obsession.

The main character in the movie becomes obsessed with Susan Orlean’s obsession with John Laroche’s obsession with orchids. He is Charlie Kaufman (played by Nicolas Cage), the Hollywood screenwriter hired to adapt Orlean’s book for the screen.

The real-life Kaufman wrote the beguilingly twisted “Being John Malcovich” and the all-but-unseen “Human Nature.” The movie opens with Kaufman’s attack of insecurity as he meets with a producer to discuss The Orchid Thief. As he struggles to adapt it, his self-doubt, underscored by the contrast with his confident identical twin brother Donald (also played by Cage) becomes an almost insurmountable obstacle. But the real obstacle is not his weakness, but his strength. While his brother casually dashes off a ludicrous screenplay about a serial killer with multiple personalities, utterly unconcerned about issues like consistency, Charlie agonizes about the imperviousness of Orlean’s book to adaptation. Finally, he decides that he movie should be about that problem, and he proceeds with such girl-on-a-ketchup-bottle-with-a-picture-of-a-girl-on-a-ketchup-bottle thoroughness that in the opening moments, the screenplay is credited to both (the real-life) Charlie and (the fictional) Donald.

Like “Malcovich,” this movie has moments of bizarre humor in the context of profound and genuine questions about identity, inversion, inspiration, obsession, and meaning and meta-meaning and meta-meta-meaning. Kaufman loves writing for the same reason Laroche loves the orchids — for their difficulty and fragility. It has some sharp Hollywood satire and some wildy funny plot twists. This is the kind of movie that makes fun of emotional turning points inspired by platitudes but then, when it throws one in (in the middle of a jungle environment that is real and symbolic), it’s a very nice one: “You are what you love, not what loves you.”

The performances are marvelous, particularly Meryl Streep as Orlean and Chris Cooper as Laroche. Ron Livingston’s performance as Charlie’s agent is a small comic gem, Brian Cox is masterful as a screenwriting expert, and Judy Greer is radiant as an orchid-loving, pie-serving waitress.

Parents should know that the movie has very mature material, including very strong language, brief nudity, sexual references and situations (including masturbation and a porn website), drinking, smoking, and drug use. There is a brief but very explicit scene of a baby being born. The movie has quasi-comic violence, but characters are injured and killed. Characters break the law, including stealing from nature preserves and making psychotropic drugs.

Families who see this movie should talk about how we chose our passions – or whether they choose us. Do Laroche and Orlean envy each other? Does Charlie envy Donald? Why did Charlie the real-life screenwriter divide himself in two in the movie portrayal? Why did he take real-life characters like Susan Orlean and John Laroche and have their movie characters do things that they never did? What do you learn from Laroche’s reason for not fixing his teeth? If you were going to re-create yourself as a movie character, what would you write? This movie both uses and makes fun of many movie conventions – which ones did you spot?

Families who enjoy this movie will also enjoy seeing “Being John Malcovich” (very mature material) and other dark movies about Hollywood like “Day of the Locust” and “The Player.” They might also enjoy Cage in the face-switching movie “Face Off” and some other twin movies like “A Stolen Life” and “The Parent Trap.”

Related Tags:

Not specified

Equilibrium

Posted on December 16, 2002 at 10:06 am

Equilibrium is set in the joyless state of Libria. It is a society built on peace at all costs. In a bid to make the outbreak of war impossible in this post-nuclear apocalypse, early Twenty First Century, all human emotions are outlawed. Any material, such as books or artworks, that might cause people to feel sensations is destroyed, as are those who engage in their production, dissemination or appreciation. Human instincts are kept in check through the regular taking of the drug Prozium. Prozium enables people to give up their own spouses and parents for execution by the state for engaging in “sense crimes”, without guilt or sorrow.

The protectors of this violent peace are the “clerics”. They are highly trained to detect anyone failing to take their Prozium doses and destroy members of the underground who allow themselves to partake in feeling. John Preston (Christian Bale) is a leading cleric, ruthless in tracking down and eradicating sense criminals. He feels nothing about destroying those closest to him. However, after a potent meeting with underground member, Mary (Emily Watson), and a missed dose of Prozium, Preston too begins to allow himself to have feelings.

So, the once emotionless, calculating cleric sets about his task of bringing down the system from the inside. In a world based upon suspicion and a near psychic perception of those who illegally retain their sensations and sensitivities this is fraught with danger. On a number of occasions Preston is almost caught out by his own newly found, emotion-driven folly and the sharpness of his new partner, Brandt (Taye Diggs). Fortunately, Preston is saved by writer/director Kurt Wimmer’s unwillingness to let logic or consistency get in the way of his story.

Equilibrium draws heavily from George Orwell’s classic, 1984. Wimmer substitutes “Big Brother” for “Father” whose voice and features are projected across Libria on enormous television screens, constantly reminding people of the dangers of the natural human state and the devastation it had led to in earlier, less sophisticated societies. Where Orwell has “thought police”, Wimmer has “sense police”. States in Orwell’s world subdue their populations by the need to maintain their war efforts, while Libria’s justifies the abuse of its people through the notion of sustaining peace.

There are a number of interesting issues that Equilibrium sets up to address. In discussions with children these could easily be drawn out, but the film itself descends into a predictable and formulaic shoot-em-up sci-fi action movie. The ninja-based gun fighting style used by the clerics verges on the balletic, but for any admirer of this film genre, they will have witnessed almost identical scenes in The Matrix.

Ultimately, Preston, emotion and beauty win over the dour, controlling Librian state. Rather than straightforward tales of good over evil, the subject of this film means that one is led to question these opposing concepts. Peace is surely good, but then in this case evil derives from an all-consuming quest for peace, which itself breeds violence. Notions of the importance of love, loyalty and joy abound, but glory is also associated with violence and destruction. Equilibrium raises all these issues, and more, for those willing to look into them. Unfortunately, and somewhat ironically, the style of the film encourages one to switch off sense awareness and subtle thinking.

Parents should know that the film is violent. The opening scenes show a sense police raid, involving much shooting and death. The closing scenes are of greater violence, big explosions and more death. In between there is intermittent violence and death. Despite this, Equilibrium is not unusually violent movie for this kind of movie and the deaths are not gory. Some younger children might be upset by the sense police’s arrest and abduction of Preston’s wife in front of her young family.

Families who enjoyed this movie may also like: “Minority Report,” “Matrix,” and “Clockwork Orange.” They might also want to read some classic dystopian literature, like Huxley’s Brave New World or 1984.

Related Tags:

Not specified

About Schmidt

Posted on December 13, 2002 at 5:18 am

Warren Schmidt (Jack Nicholson) sits at his desk as though he was standing at attention during a full-dress inspection. As he watches the clock move from 4:58 to 5:00, he is as clenched as a fist.

It is Warren’s last day on the job as an actuary for the appropriately-named Woodman insurance company. He has coped with a life of disappointment and emptiness through rigidity. He is stingy with words, money, and emotion. He does not confide in anyone but us, the audience and a little boy in Africa he “adopted” by agreeing to send him $22 a month. When Schmidt tells us that he looks over at his wife and wonders who that old woman is, we know that when he looks in the mirror he wonders who that old man is, too.

Schmidt’s daughter Jeannie (Hope Davis) is getting married to Randall, a man with a mullet who sells waterbeds (Dermot Mulroney), and this is just one more in a series of disappointments. When Schmidt’s wife dies, and then when he finds out that she was keeping a secret from him, he becomes completely unstuck from his moorings. He may have hated his life before, but at least he knew what he was supposed to do and had the luxury of blaming someone else for everything he did not like. His only satisfaction – that of playing by a set of rules he understood and supported in theory – now seems foolish. He takes the huge motor home his wife made him buy and sets off in it toward his daughter’s house. And in the grandest tradition of story-telling, it is a journey that is both physical and psychological.

He plans to try to stop the wedding, but after a lifetime of going along with other people’s rules, he has no idea of how to proceed. The best he can do is make a weak protest to his daughter, who lets him know that his support is much more valuable to her than his advice.

Nicholson is mesmerizing. His Schmidt is funny, irritating, pitiable, and utterly heartbreaking. Kathy Bates, as Randall’s mother, is magnificent in a performance that is full-bodied (in both senses of the word). The details of middle American ceremonies – the retirement party, the funeral, the wedding – are all just right, sharply observed but affectionate.

Parents should know that the movie includes very strong language and sexual references and situations, including adultery. Characters drink and smoke. There are tense and sad family scenes that may upset some viewers.

Families who see this movie should talk about why Schmidt confided in a little boy he had never met instead of any of his friends or family. What do you think he will do next? What should he do? What should he have done that would have made him happier?

Families who enjoy this movie will also enjoy Harry and Tonto with an Oscar-winning performance by Art Carney.

Related Tags:

Not specified

Adam Sandler’s Eight Crazy Nights

Posted on December 13, 2002 at 5:18 am

“8 Crazy Nights” is a bit of an enigma. In the Venn diagram of movie goers, Adam Sandler fans are not an easy overlap with those who cherish holiday musicals. This lame attempt at comedy is more likely to appeal to the former than the latter.

Families looking for something to watch together should steer well clear, unless appreciation of outhouse humor is a family tradition. Clearly, this movie, with its taunting mockery of the physically challenged, its very graphic port-o-potty jokes and its drunken binges, is also not for animation fans seeking Disney’s sweet concoctions or Pixar’s wry wit. Older teens looking for the extreme edge of South Park will not be appeased by the suburban softness of fart jokes. All of which probably narrows the circle of appreciative audience members to those who want to see a feature length movie along the lines of skits from Spike & Mike’s Sick & Twisted Animation Festival.

Davey Stone (Adam Sandler) at 33 is an angry drunk living alone and hating the community, the holidays and himself. When his destructive behavior lands him in front of the judge and a jail sentence, Whitey Duvall (also Adam Sandler), the endlessly good hearted youth basketball coach, intervenes to help Davey find his inner-adult. Through flashbacks, Davey (Adam Uhler) at 12-years old is revealed to be a sweet and thoughtful kid with loving parents, a best friend/girlfriend, Jennifer, and a talent for basketball. It was his inability to come to terms with the loss of his parents that took Davey down the path to becoming the heavy-drinking town miscreant. Whitey’s attempts to put Davey on the straight and narrow path are aided by Eleanor Duvall (also Adam Sandler), Whitey’s twin sister, and the reappearance of Jennifer (Jackie Titone). However, it is a surreal intervention by product placements(!) at the mall that cracks Davey’s defenses, allowing him to finally accept his grief and find the spirit of the holidays.

Unleashed by the medium of animation, Sandler’s raging little boy humor takes on an aura of threatening menace, tempered only by Davey’s 11th hour revelation, which does little to heal the wounds inflicted along the way. Unlike his personas in “The Waterboy”, “Little Nicky”, “Happy Gilmore”, or numerous Saturday Night Live skits, Davey – Adam Sandler’s proxy — is seldom the object of the comical abuse, but it is instead the diminutive and furry, Whitey, who is the town’s whipping boy. While Davey’s equal opportunity hatred is (somewhat) explained, the treatment of the physically challenged Duvall twins by the town rings of a darker, crueler humor.

To soften the edges of jokes made at Whitey’s expense, a reappearing herd of deer (also voiced by Sandler) provide a comical tenderness (and some more excrement “humor”) in the movie’s most callow moments. In the end, it is only in the musical numbers that allow the lighter touch of Sandler’s humor to shine through and the audience can relax for a moment, remembering why they thought he was funny in the first place.

So who is the audience? This movie is aimed at Adam Sandler fans, who will chuckle at cameos by Jon Lovitz and Kevin Nealon, and sit happily through the credits to listen to version three of the Hanukah Song. Not only does the song lend the movie a title from its lyrics, but it showcases Sandler’s gentler irreverence, thus providing the palate cleansing mint after a mediocre meal.

Parents should know that this movie is not for young children or those who might find Davey’s actions worth imitating. The movie has extremely vulgar humor and strong language for a PG-13. The gross-out factor of this movie is quite high so some parents may not wish to watch the movie themselves.

Families who see this film might discuss Davey’s method of coping with the loss of his parents and his difficulties in accepting sympathy from people. Families may wish to discuss the treatment of different characters by the community, starting with the Duvall twins.

Families who enjoy this movie might enjoy other Adam Sandler movies such as “The Wedding Singer” and “Big Daddy.” Those looking for movies about the transforming powers of the holidays might wish to watch “Miracle on 34th Street”, “or “What a Wonderful Life.” For musicals, families might prefer the warmth of “White Christmas.” For potty humor and holidays, National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation. For entertaining and animated holiday entertainment, “The Nightmare before Christmas” or “How the Grinch Stole Christmas.” Funny Hanukah movies are harder to find and while Adam Sandler might just be the one to change that someday, it will not be today.

Related Tags:

Not specified