Rock of Ages

Posted on June 14, 2012 at 6:00 pm

The era of big power ballads reaching to the back rows of big stadiums filled with big crowds of fans with big hair is paid big tribute in this irresistibly entertaining anthem-rock love letter to the 80’s. Sung almost entirely by actors rather than rockers, the music is homogenized, somewhere between a “Glee” episode and a real glee club performance. But, let’s face it. Some of these songs were close to parody even at the time.

Marx famously said that history repeats itself, first as tragedy and then as farce. When it comes to music, history repeats itself, too. First — at least ideally — it is raw and authentic expression of emotion and, as “School of Rock” reminds us, “sticking it to The Man.” When it repeats itself, it is The Man. Yes, “Rock of Ages” is a jukebox musical that turns the barbaric yawps and screeches of rock and roll into something between karaoke, elevator music, and Up with People. Journey’s “Anyway You Want It” is currently being used as an insurance company jingle and background music in an animated kids’ film, Madagascar 3 and Dee Snider sings in an ad about cleaning the rock and roll out of your carpet. So it’s hard to say that it dilutes the authenticity of these songs to be performed by Mary J. Blige, Constantine Maroulis, and Julianne Hough.

Various romantic, business, and existential conflicts provide excuses for songs from Bon Jovi, Guns N Roses, Def Leppard, Twisted Sister, Poison, and Pat Benetar. Hough plays Sherrie (how did they not include “Oh, Sherrie?”), a small-town girl, living in a lonely world, who takes not the midnight train to anywhere but the midnight bus from Oklahoma to Los Angeles, in search of the excitement and adventure she has glimpsed through her beloved collection of record albums. They — along with everything else she owns — are stolen as soon as she arrives. But Drew (Diego Boneta), a city boy who works at a club and wants to be a singer, gets her a job as a waitress. The club is owned by Dennis (Alec Baldwin), who is hoping that an upcoming show from a superstar rock group he helped in their early days will solve his financial problems. His devoted techie (that’s sound technology, not computers, back in the 80’s) is Lonny (Russell Brand).

The group is the fictitious Arsenal and this is their last show. Their rock god frontman, Stacee Jaxx (Tom Cruise) is leaving them for a solo career. Also arriving is the Rolling Stone reporter who is, uh covering Jaxx (Malin Ackerman). And also on her way is the wife of the mayor (Catherine Zeta Jones), leading the charge against rock and roll for its outrageous lyrics and sexual rhythms, in support of her husband’s plan to drive out sex, drugs, and rock and roll so he can let his business cronies gentrify the area. The irony is not lost that the storyline in the movie gentrifies not only the music it portrays but the plot of the already-prettied-up musical playing since 2009 near the already-gentrified Times Square. The script has a few choice moments, including a funny joke about another element of 80’s music — boy bands. And it is cute to have the protesting women sing a real rock anthem, “We’re Not Going to Take It” while the rock fans sing the song even the Jefferson Starship (nee Airplane) is embarrassed by, “We Built This City.” (Look carefully in the crowd for some real 80’s stars including Debbie Gibson and Sebastian Bach.)

If the songs are a little soft in the middle, well so are the teenagers of the 80’s who are this film’s target audience. Hough and Boneta are so bland they all but disappear fromt the screen. The only real singer in the cast is Mary J. Blige, but Cruise vamps like a superstar and his performance is choice. As the rock star who is as zonked by ennui as he is by substance abuse and groupies but who comes alive on stage imploring us to pour some sugar on him, he is a hoot. He is clearly having the time of his life and the pure enjoyment he, Baldwin, Brand, and Zeta Jones bring to the film is as buoyant as the still-hummable music. Yes, we were young, heartache to heartache we stood, and like the brick-sized cell phones, buying albums at Tower Records, and cassette tapes, the memories bring a smile. And some devil’s horns.

Parents should know that this film includes gay and straight sexual situations and explicit situations including groupies and strippers, drinking and drunkenness, and some strong language.

Family discussion: What has changed the most in popular music since these songs were hits? Which of today’s songs will still be popular 30 years from now?

If you like this, try: “Across the Universe” and concert films from some of the groups whose songs are featured in this movie like Def Leppard’s “Rock of Ages,” Bon Jovi’s “Life at Madison Square Garden,” and Guns ‘n’ Roses’ “Use Your Illusions” I and II

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It’s Complicated

Posted on April 27, 2010 at 8:00 am

Forget the accents. Forget the anguish, the steely resolve, the iambic pentameter. All hail Meryl Streep for what she is best at — comedy. She spins screenplay straw into movie gold, turning yet another fungible Nancy Meyers saga about a beautiful and accomplished middle-aged woman triumphing over a womanizing man into a miracle of warmth, heart, and wisdom just from the power of sheer acting genius and being the truly and deeply glorious person that she is.

Meyers does have a talent for, in the words of one of her movie titles “What Women Want.” She knows that there is an eager audience for a story about a middle-aged woman who is so universally adored that even her ex-husband, the hound who left her for a gorgeous young woman (cue the slo-mo stroll in the midriff-revealing sarong) can’t get enough of her and admits that he was crazy to let her go. What could be more satisfying than that?

One of the wisest and most entertaining books ever written about movies is Stanley Cavell’s Pursuits of Happiness: The Hollywood Comedy of Remarriage, where he discusses the power of movie romances that bring estranged couples back together. As beguiling as it is to think of the freshness of first falling in love and the pleasures of learning everything about one another, there is something even more deeply satisfying about the idea of falling in love with someone with whom there are no illusions, and especially having that someone fall in love with you. Anyone can fall in love with what we think we know or with someone we’ve seen at his or her best. But when it’s someone we’ve seen at his or her worst; that’s got to be love for sure.

Or, it can be something satisfying in a different way — payback.

Streep plays Jane (as in plain?), divorced for ten years from Jake (Alec Baldwin, perfecting the art of the appealing but infuriating male) finds herself in bed with him following a tipsy dinner when they are in New York together for their son’s graduation. She can’t resist the chance to feel pursued, validated, desired. The spark they once had is still there. And she would be inhuman if she did not feel a little triumphant about his preferring her to his beautiful young wife.

But there are (grown-up) children to consider. Being back together frees Jane to admit that she was not blameless in their break-up. It allows her to allow Jake to see her (literally) as she is, not as he remembers. And it opens her heart to some other possibilities, including the shy architect working on the addition to her house — including the dream kitchen to replace a kitchen already pretty darn dreamy.

Meyers, astutely profiled by Daphne Merkin in the New York Times Magazine, seems to be the only person in Hollywood today interested in and capable of connecting deeply to an audience of women who want more from a movie than frothy rom-coms or sex and shopping. Rare in the world of chick flicks, there are no trying-on-clothes montages or makeovers. Her movies feature capable women with good friends and loving families. The most preposterous fantasy in her films may not be the gorgeously decorated settings or even the swains in pursuit but the unequivocally devoted friends and especially children and even the prospective son-in-law — take another look at the way Jude Law’s little girls fall into instant love with Cameron Diaz in “The Holiday.” Like Jane in this film, who considers and then rejects the idea of a little cosmetic surgery, Meyers’ women start out fine with who they are and then get even more so.

Streep is what Meyers’ women want to be — supremely warm and nurturing (watch the way she keeps feeding everyone exquisite but apparently completely non-fattening meals), self-aware, and able with a little adorable struggle, to impose some boundaries in a very familiar way. She fills in what Meyers’s slightly calculating formula leaves out and makes this movie as guilty a pleasure as those chocolate croissants she whips up that make her date fall for her as we already have.

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Comedy Date movie Romance

My Sister’s Keeper

Posted on June 25, 2009 at 6:32 pm

B-

Lowest Recommended Age:	High School
MPAA Rating:	Rated PG-13 for mature thematic content, some disturbing images, sensuality, language and brief teen drinking
Profanity:	Brief strong language (one f-word, a few other curse words)
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Teen gets drunk
Violence/ Scariness:	A theme of the movie is cancer and there are characters who are very ill with explicit and graphic images of treatment and symptoms, sad deaths
Diversity Issues:	None
Date Released to Theaters:	June 26, 2009

How far would you go to save your child’s life? How far should you go? Those are the questions posed — and largely ducked — in this film based on the best-selling book, My Sister’s Keeper, by Jodi Picoult. The New York Times recently said that in Picoult’s books, which often focus on “terrible things” happening to children, “he assault on any individual family is typically mounted from angles multiple and unforeseen.”

The “terrible things” here are inspired by a real-life story. Sara (Cameron Diaz) and Brian (Jason Patric), learn that no one in their family matched their daughter well enough to be able to donate bone marrow or blood cells she needs for cancer treatment. So, they decided to have another baby, one specifically genetically tweaked to be able to provide her sister with healthy cells, starting with the blood from her umbilical cord. As she says, most children arrive by accident, but she was designed to be born for spare parts. At age 11, having spent her entire life being pricked and prodded and now being asked to give up a kidney, Anna (Abigail Breslin) hires a lawyer (Alec Baldwin) to sue for “medical emancipation,” to get permission to stop.

Solomon had to choose between two mothers who both claimed the same baby and he was not related to any of them. But Sara and Brian must choose between their daughters, and they are so desperate to save the one who is sick that they cannot admit to themselves the damage they are doing to the one who is well. The ones who are well — there is also a son who is so overlooked that he sneaks back into the house after being out all night only to find that no one noticed.

Director Nick Cassavetes (“The Notebook”) wisely changed the jarring ending in the novel and is very effective in conveying the matter-of-fact mastery of the details of the symptoms and treatments, a touch of authenticity that is in sharp contrast to the one-dimensionality of the characters. He overdoes the pop songs on the soundtrack, though, with so many montages it feels like a music video punctuated with brief scenes of family anguish. But Picolt insists on allotting tragedy to every character as though she is dealing cards. And she undermines the power of the story and its themes with a syrupy overlay that distorts the issues so that the result is more gooey than dramatic. Cinematographer Caleb Deschanel composes exquisite images. But they add to the sense the film does exactly what it says it does not do and ties everything up in a mode that is just too neat and convenient instead of engaging in a forthright and honest way with the issues and the characters. That just rings hollow and ultimately disrespectful to the conflicts it purports to portray.

Patric, who should be in more movies, is outstanding as Brian. The look in his eyes as he watches his daughter go on a special date is heart-wrenching. Diaz, in her first role as a mother, is fine in the quieter moments but never reaches the ferocity that is at the heart of the story. As the sick girl, Sofia Vassilieva is luminious and wise. But the best moments on screen come from Joan Cusack as the judge. Every tiny gesture and look is searingly authentic, a bracing dose of reality in the midst of the gooey saints all around her.

Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa

Posted on February 6, 2009 at 4:00 pm

The rare sequel that improves on the original, “Madagascar 2” keeps the silliness and steps up the heart. In the first film, four zoo animals run away and after a series of adventures are sent to live in an African wildlife refuge. Alex the pampered city lion (voice of Ben Stiller), Marty the zebra who longs for the veldt (voice of Chris Rock), Melman the hypochondriac giraffe (voice of David Schwimmer), and Gloria, the warm-hearted hippo (voice of Jada Pinkett Smith) are still, so to speak, fish out of water when it comes to living in the wild. Alex especially is eager to get back home. But their plane, piloted by ditsy penguins, crashes and they find themselves again in the wilderness.

But this time, it feels like home. Alex is reunited with the parents he barely remembers (voices of Bernie Mac and Sherri Shepherd). Marty is overjoyed to be at last among his own kind with a herd of zebras. Gloria wants to settle down with a mate and is delighted to see some handsome hippos as possible prospects. And Melman’s expertise with medical treatment gets him dubbed the new witch doctor. He is able to save the life of a young giraffe by setting his broken leg.

But a rival for the “alpha lion” position (voice of Alec Baldwin) tricks Alex’s father into forcing Alex to fight and banishing him when he loses. Marty finds that while the other zebras may look and act exactly like him, he misses his best friend. Melman tries to find a way to tell Gloria how much he cares for her. And Alex has to find a way to be true to himself as a lion and as a New Yorker.

While there is nothing as tone-deaf as the first film’s focus on whether Alex would eat his best friend, there are still a few clangers. Though gently handled, part of the plot concerns a character’s offer to sacrifice himself by jumping into lava because some of the animals believe it will appease the gods and restore their water supply. A cub is captured by poachers and his father is shot (minor injury). A feisty elderly woman’s fistfights are intended to be humorous. There is nothing especially new here. But it is funny and colorful and even a little bit sweet and you gotta love those nutty penguins.