The disability advocates who are picketing “Tropic Thunder” should take a look at “The House Bunny.” It is a much more worthwhile target for their complaints. In that movie, the title character becomes the house mother for a sorority of dorks and losers. She transforms them all with a little mascara, some skimpy clothes, and some tips on how to talk to boys. A few free drinks and an “Aztec virgin sacrifice” party blow-out later, and they’re the most popular girls on campus. One of characters is a young woman wearing a brace for scoliosis, played by Rumer Willis, daughter of Bruce Willis and Demi Moore (far right in the photo). The movie also includes a character whose only characteristic is being very short, another defining condition played only for laughs. You can see only a portion of her arm in this publicity photo, which tells you everything you need to know about the role she plays in the movie.
As usual with a disabled character like the girl in the brace, the disability is her only characteristic and we never learn anything else about her. SPOILER ALERT: Incredibly, the plot resolution for this character is that the brace simply falls off of her as she runs (like “Forrest Gump”), with a little help from the former bunny. It turns out she has not needed the brace for four years but kept it on because she was shy. Instead of taking the opportunity to show us a disabled character who is comfortable with her disability and is able to have a full life of studies and friends, the movie implies that no one can be popular and confident with a back brace.

A romantic comedy needs to get us on the side of its couple as individuals and on the side of romance. This one fails by giving us characters so crude and unlikeable that even the star wattage of Cameron Diaz and Ashton Kutcher cannot make us care. Most of the movie centers on their attempts to torture each other during a six-month court-ordered period of living together and marital counseling (from Queen Latifah, whose no-nonsense diagnosis of what is wrong should have been applied to the screenplay). The audience may feel that they are being tortured as Joy (Diaz) and Jack (Kutcher) battle over sweaty socks and whether the toilet seat is left up.

Joy is humiliatingly dumped by her fiancee (SNL’s Jason Sudeikis) in front of all of their friends. Jack is fired by his father (Treat Williams) for not taking the job seriously. They meet when they both take off for Vegas to get away from their disasters. So, of course, they create an even bigger one. They get completely drunk and wake up the next morning married. They quickly agree to an annulment until they win a $3 million jackpot. A judge (Dennis Miller) orders them to live together (“I sentence you to six months hard marriage”) to try to make the marriage work before he will decide how to allocate the money. And so Joy and Jack scheme to get each other to give up, then to give cause for divorce by cheating. And then, just as they begin to appreciate each other, there is time for one more setback.

Screenwriter Dana Fox was also responsible for “The Wedding Date,” which suffered from a similarly ugly premise. Romantic comedies can be sexy, even naughty, but they have to have a charm and buoyancy that is quickly deflated by crude, gross humor. It makes the main characters unlikeable. There is no reason to believe in either their enmity or their growing affection so we never connect to them or care about the outcome. It is supposed to be endearing that this couple gets blind drunk and gets married, that he pees on the dirty dishes in the sink and removes the bathroom door to annoy her, that she shows a cab driver one breast (she negotiates him down from two) to get a free ride. It is not. It is supposed to make sense that Jack’s vulgar jokes endear him to the executives at Joy’s company. It does not. We are supposed to see why Joy and Jack begin to care about each other. We don’t. It isn’t funny enough and it isn’t romantic enough. In other words, what should have stayed in Vegas is this movie.

Anyone for a 3-hour tour? If you get on the S.S. Minnow and the other passengers are a movie star, a professor, a millionaire and his wife, not to mention Mary Ann, you might want to check to make sure you’ve packed enough to wear for a long vacation.
Yes, the S.S. Minnow from Gilligan’s Island is being restored and will be available for tours. More than one boat was used on the show, but this is the one in the opening credits.
I have special affection for this boat because it was named after my father, Newton Minow, whose famous speech to the broadcasters calling television a “vast wasteland” annoyed “Gilligan’s Island” creator Sherwood Schwartz. So Schwartz named the sinking boat after him! My dad got a huge kick out of it and later had a very cordial exchange of letters with Schwartz. It is a great point of pride for our family.
Thanks to Zeke for bringing me up to date on this story!

Inspired by “Tropic Thunder,” Keith Demko of Reel Fanatic created a superb list from one of my favorite categories: movies about making movies. On his list: critic-turned-director Francois Truffaut’s bittersweet Day for Night, the trenchant satire Living in Oblivion, the documentary about Terry Gilliam’s failed attempt to make a Don Quixote movie, Lost in La Mancha, Tim Burton’s black and white tribute to the man often named as the worst director ever with Johnny Depp as Ed Wood. Demko also includes some movies about television like the story of the Letterman/Leno battle, The Late Shift.

I’d add to his list a few more great films like the classic Hollywood movie about classic Hollywood, The Bad and the Beautiful, the hilarious saga of a Revolutionary War movie taking over a small college town, Sweet Liberty, David Mamet’s witty satire State and Main, and of course the all-time favorite about the beginning of the sound era, Singin’ in the Rain. Here Gene Kelly and Donald O’Connor turn an elocution lesson into a dance number:

A little bit of grittiness keeps this fact-based story of a girl who plays football from getting too sugary. The talented Keke Palmer of Akeelah and the Bee gives a beautifully understated, witty, and sincere performance as Jasmine, the first girl to play quarterback in the Pop Warner Super Bowl for middle school football teams. But the credit for the movie’s tone and depth goes to two men better known for provocative, even offensive music: director Fred Durst of metal band Limp Bizkit and rapper/actor/director/entrepreneur Ice Cube, serving here as co-producer and co-star.

Ice Cube plays Curtis, whose dream of playing football was wiped out with a knee injury and whose dream of escaping his small Illinois town to go to Miami was wiped out when the local factory closed down, all-but extinguishing the economy of the community. He spends his days drinking beer, hanging out to watch the middle school football team practice, and doing his best to forgo all human contact and forget that he ever dreamed of anything.

His sister-in-law Claire (Tasha Smith) offers him $5 an hour to watch her daughter Jasmine after school. Curtis and Jasmine stay as far away from each other as possible until one day he asks her to toss him his football and he realizes she has a gift for throwing a long spiral. And she realizes he has a gift for bringing the best out of her. The coach is utterly opposed to having her on the team — until he sees her throw. The team is utterly opposed to having her on the team — until they see her courage and quick thinking. A couple of training montages and a couple of overcome setbacks later, the town is energized behind the team and everyone is feeling like a winner.

Durst does a fine job in creating the atmosphere of the depressed town but most of all he is an actor’s director. He brings out the best in his talented cast, including Smith, Matt Craven as the coach, and the bleacher bums, kibbitzers, and classmates who make up the rest of the community in the struggling small town. But he knows the heart of the story and the heart of the movie is the relationship between Curtis and his niece. Palmer is an enormously gifted young actress, here for the first time playing a character who is for a significant part of the story largely internal. She shows us Jasmine’s sensitivity and strength even when she is just reading a book by herself at a lunch table, and her interactions with Ice Cube are natural and believable.

And under Durst’s direction, Ice Cube shows us again that he can be a first-rate actor. This is the Ice Cube of “Boyz N the Hood,” “Three Kings,” and Barbershop, not the condescending, superficial performances of Are We Done Yet and All About the Benjamins
. He gives a layered, subtle portrayal and it is a pleasure to watch him bloom along with Jasmine.