Shanghai Calling

Posted on February 20, 2013 at 2:07 pm

B+
Lowest Recommended Age: Middle School
MPAA Rating: Rated PG-13 for some language including sexual references
Profanity: Some strong language
Alcohol/ Drugs: Drinking
Violence/ Scariness: None
Diversity Issues: A theme of the movie
Date Released to Theaters: February 20, 2013
Amazon.com ASIN: B00BESHGAE

Shanghai Calling” is a fish out of water story filled with charm.

Korean-American actor Daniel Henney plays Sam, a Chinese-American lawyer who is sent to China to work on a big project.  He does not speak Chinese and he knows very little about his heritage.  He has never been further out of New York City than 79th Street.  But he is ambitious and confident and is sure that he can make turn the project around quickly and make a triumphant return home.

Of course, he is wrong about, well, everything.

“Happy Endings'” Eliza Coupe plays Amanda, Sam’s “relocation specialist,” an American single mother who is fluent in Chinese.  Bill Paxton (“Big Love”) plays the head of the “Americaville” expatriate community, mostly made up of business people who have come to China to take advantage of the enormous economic opportunities.  And Alan Ruck (Cameron from “Ferris Buehler”) is the client, a cell phone manufacturer who wants to lock in an exclusive deal with a quirky inventor.  Sam also has an assistant named Fang Fang (Zhu Zhu of “Cloud Atlas”).

The skills that made Sam successful in New York just get him into deeper trouble in China.  He unwisely ignores the advice from Amanda and Fang Fang, and ultimate discovers that his biggest failings come from his own unrecognized prejudices.

The laughter comes more from character than displacement mishaps.  Coupe is lovely in a more natural, understated character than her hilarious Jane in “Happy Endings,” and Henney’s lanky appeal as he tries to cope with an avalanche of language and cultural challenges is a pleasure to watch.  You will root for him to learn his lessons, save the day, and get the girl — and you will recognize and question your own assumptions and prejudices as well.

“Shanghai Calling” is in limited theatrical release, now available on Amazon instant video,  on iTunes, and on demand.

Related Tags:

 

Comedy Date movie Drama Movies -- format Romance

I Love You, Beth Cooper

Posted on November 3, 2009 at 8:00 am

Paul Rust is 28, and looks it, maybe a little older. But in “I Love You, Beth Cooper” he plays Denis Cooverman, a high school valedictorian. Jack T. Carpenter, last seen playing a college student in “Sydney White” two years ago, is 24, and looks it. But he is also playing a graduating senior, Cooverman’s best friend Rich Munsch. As the movie opens, two actors who look like they should be playing guys in lab coats and stethoscopes wearing suits and carrying briefcases are wearing cap and gown and pretending — badly — that they are at their high school graduation. They look older than their principal, clue number one that no one is paying much attention to making sure this movie is going to work on any level.
Clues two through twelve that this movie is a mess come very quickly, and that is all that comes quickly in this slow-moving, sour-tasting disaster. It is possible — unlikely, but possible — that there is yet some unexplored humor to be made out of difficulty in opening a champagne bottle, but what this movie gives us instead is an excruciatingly drawn-out extended sequence with the most unimaginative of pay-offs. The characters race from one place to another for no purpose — either in story or in comedy. There are more locations than there are laughs.
Cooverman, the high school valedictorian, gets up to give his graduation speech and instead of the usual, “as we go forth,” he decides this would be a good time to tell the school’s mean girl that she is an insecure witch, the school bully that he is cruel because he was abused, Munsch that he should come out of the closet, and the school cheerleader, Beth Cooper (Hayden Panettiere of “Heroes”) that even though they have never spoken, he loves her. So the rest of the movie consists of the consequences of these poorly-timed revelations as Cooverman has to run from Cooper’s crazed and coked up boyfriend and Munsch keeps telling everyone he’s not gay. Oh, and everyone gets to break in on Cooverman’s parents having sex in a car. Cooverman’s father is played by Alan Ruck, who must have spent every minute on set wondering how he could be in both one of the all-time best teen movies (“Ferris Bueller’s Day Off”) and one of the worst (this one). Every single character is a dull paper-thin caricature, from Cooper’s roid rage boyfriend to Cooverman’s despised ex-girlfriend, whose unforgivable failing is that she is not pretty and she likes him.
The wild last night of high school party movie can be done well (“Can’t Hardly Wait,” “Dazed and Confused,” “American Graffiti”). Here, however, director Chris Columbus seems to have taken the tiredest and most predictable elements from each of them, wrung out anything resembling an authentic or appealing detail, and then dragged out every single set-piece to the agonizing breaking point. I can’t say I’ve never seen a clumsy attempt to open a champagne bottle go wrong on screen before, but I can say I have never seen one so poorly staged and lugubriously paced. It look Cooverman less time to get through high school than it felt like I spent watching this film.

(more…)

Related Tags:

 

Comedy Romance
THE MOVIE MOM® is a registered trademark of Nell Minow. Use of the mark without express consent from Nell Minow constitutes trademark infringement and unfair competition in violation of federal and state laws. All material © Nell Minow 1995-2024, all rights reserved, and no use or republication is permitted without explicit permission. This site hosts Nell Minow’s Movie Mom® archive, with material that originally appeared on Yahoo! Movies, Beliefnet, and other sources. Much of her new material can be found at Rogerebert.com, Huffington Post, and WheretoWatch. Her books include The Movie Mom’s Guide to Family Movies and 101 Must-See Movie Moments, and she can be heard each week on radio stations across the country.

Website Designed by Max LaZebnik