Bad Teacher

Posted on June 23, 2011 at 6:00 pm

Are you a fan of comedy based on the sole premise that it is funny to see a beautiful woman make outrageously crude and narcissistic statements? Then go watch Sarah Silverman. This movie will only show you how much better she is by comparison.

It’s a shame to see the talents of Cameron Diaz, Jason Segal, Justin Timberlake, and Lucy Punch wasted on a one-joke premise that could barely support an SNL sketch. Here it is: Diaz plays Elizabeth, a bad teacher. How bad is she? She snoozes through class while the kids watch movies, she drinks and smokes marijuana at school, she never learns the kids’ names or teaches them anything, and she uses bad language. She will do anything to marry a wealthy man or get the money she needs for breast enlargement surgery, because she thinks it will help her marry a wealthy man. She is not just bad; unfortunately she is also unpleasant, annoying, and dull.

There’s really nothing more to say about the plot. Elizabeth is bad in many different situations — cafeteria, classroom, school dance, student’s home, and field trip. She is bad in different ways — mean, selfish, obnoxious, dishonest. She is rude to many different people — teachers, parents, students. She uses her looks, most notably at a fund-raising car wash where she diverts the funds to her own Daisy Dukes and in an encounter with the keeper of the standardized test she wants to steal (Thomas Lennon). But it’s the same joke over and over and over and over. The expression of unabashed, vulgar, angry, selfish superego in what is supposed to be a protected context has undeniable appeal (see the best-seller Go the F**k to Sleep). But it is not enough to sustain a movie.

It’s briefly fun to see “Modern Family’s” Eric Stonestreet in a very different role and Diaz gets some credit for being fearless — no winking at the audience to let us know she’s loveable. But Timberlake is wasted in another one-dimensional part. The few highlights come from Jason Segal, who has a wonderfully wry confidence as the school’s PE teacher and Lucy Punch as Elizabeth’s nemesis has some fun with the demented perkiness of a teacher driven around the bend. They show how much more a talented comic performer can bring to an under-written story. But that isn’t enough to keep “Bad Teacher” from being a bad movie.

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The Green Hornet

Posted on May 3, 2011 at 8:00 am

Anyone here remember Van Williams?

He was the star of the 1966-67 television series, “The Green Hornet.” But the only thing anyone remembers about the show today was the actor who played the title character’s martial arts and automotive expert sidekick, Kato: Bruce Lee. The tradition continues with this new film. Jay Chou (“Curse of the Golden Flower”) has the screen charisma, timing, and fight skills to make Kato watchable. That guy who plays the Hornet? Not so much.

In fact, the three things wrong with this movie are: Seth Rogen co-produced, Seth Rogen co-wrote, and Seth Rogen stars. Seth Rogen the co-producer and writer badly over-estimates the appeal of Rogen the performer. When called upon to play a clueless schlub, he can convey a certain shambling lack of pretension or artifice with some appeal. He was perfect as the brainless jello character in “Monsters vs. Aliens” and held his own fairly well as a secondary character in “Funny People,” “Superbad,” and “Knocked Up.” He may have some meta aspirations in casting himself as a self-indulgent and irresponsible playboy who decides to become a force for justice. But he doesn’t even make a persuasive dissolute. When he tries to do more, he loses all of the affection from the audience he ever mustered in playing guys who were better than they knew. Here is is so much less than his character believes to be and is supposed to be, he comes across as full of himself and egotistical; it’s as though his success in Hollywood and his hyphenate status have finally gone to his head. And even though he apparently recognizes his limited range by reducing the character arc to about an inch and a half; even after Britt decides to become a sort-of grown-up and a sort-of crime-fighter, Rogen the writer and Rogen the actor keep him pretty much an immature dope all the way through. It wears thin long before the movie is half over.

It also drags down the parts of the film that do work, especially Chou, whose precise, understated delivery is a nice counterpoint to Rogen’s messy stumbles. Michel Gondry (“Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind,” “Be Kind, Rewind”) has a gift for whimsy that adds visual interest. An impossibly souped-up supercar has an old-fashioned turntable for playing disarmingly retro LPs. He slices up the screen into segments resembling something between “The Thomas Crown Affair,” the opening credits of “The Brady Bunch,” and that Breck shampoo commercial about “and they they told two people and they told two people.” And he makes good use of the depth of 3D in the fight scenes. We get Kato-vision to see how he sizes up the opposition, with a clever variation later on. Oscar-winner Christoph Waltz (“Inglourious Basterds”) manages to make more of the villain than the script gives him and there’s a nice cameo from the ubiquitous James Franco (giving us time to think that he would make a great Hornet).

Rogen is falling into the Adam Sandler/Peter Pan trap, the endless boy-man, alternately wolfish toward and intimidated by girls (Cameron Diaz has the thankless role) and incapable of taking responsibility at home or at work. At one point, Kato literally puts him in a diaper. The only reason to give the audience such a mess is so we can have the fun of seeing him learn some lessons. But he never does. This is a hornet that’s all buzz, no sting.

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Shrek Forever After

Posted on December 7, 2010 at 8:17 pm

Talk about happily ever after! “Shrek Forever After” is the best Shrek since the first one.

After a third episode that proved they couldn’t take it much further by going forward, they’ve found a clever way to reboot the story with an “It’s a Wonderful Life”-style look at what Shrek’s life would be like if none of the events in the first movie ever happened.

As the movie begins, Shrek the big green ogre (voice of Mike Myers) is feeling a little suffocated with his fairy tale ending in the land of Far Far Away. He loves Fiona (voice of Cameron Diaz) and their triplets but the daily grind of caring for them and the constant scrutiny of being a celebrity is making him feel uncomfortably domesticated. His most fearsome roar is turned into a party trick. He longs for “just one day to feel like a real ogre again,” to go back to a time “when I could do what I wanted…when the world made sense.”

And that is just the opening that Rumpelstiltskin (voice of writer Walt Dohrn) has been waiting for. Rump wants to be King and came very close once before when Fiona’s parents, the King (voice of John Cleese) and Queen (voice of Julie Andrews) have come to Rumpelstiltskin as a desperate last resort. He can break the curse that condemns their daughter Fiona to be human by day and an ogre at night. But he always insists on something of value in exchange. They are just about to sign over their kingdom when they get word that the spell has been broken.

Rumpy gets his revenge when Shrek impulsively agrees to an exchange — if he can have just one more day as an unencumbered ogre, he will give up a day of his life in return, any day of Rumpy’s choice. But just as in real life, people in fairy tales never read the fine print. After about an hour of fun scaring villagers (to the cheery accompaniment of The Carpenters’ “Top of the World”), Shrek begins to feel lonely, especially when he starts to understand that his best friend Donkey (voice of Eddie Murphy) and Fiona have never met him. And then he begins to feel dread when he realizes that it will be much harder than he thought to find his way back home.

The first Shrek was a wonderful surprise, a post-modern fairy tale. Shrek 2 was a lot of fun but a bit noisy and crowded. Shrek 3 was over-clever, self-referential, and snarky. This one restores the balance between humor and heart. And it gives Fiona a chance at center stage as the confident and courageous leader of a rebel band of outlaw ogres. Shrek falls in love with her all over again, and we do, too.

We meet up with some great new characters, especially ogres Cookie (voice of Craig Robinson of “The Office”) and Gretched (voice of “Glee’s” Jane Lynch). Our giant green hero enjoys being with his own kind but is nonplussed to find himself something of a runt among his fellow ogres. The bounty hunter Rumpy sends to round up Shrek and Fiona is the legendary Pied Piper. It turns out his famous pipe has a special ogre setting that has the huge green folk helplessly shaking their groove things as they boogie off to the dungeon. And there are some big changes in those we already know. Speaking of big, Puss is far, far away from the dashing swashbuckler; here he is Fiona’s ultra-pampered pet.

The film makes superb use of the 3D effects with action sequences that involve a huge pendulum swinging through Rumpelstiltskin’s palace. There’s also a 3D diaper joke, though thankfully not what you’d think. The spit take, on the other hand, is. Dorhn is a bit of a weak spot in the voice talent but the film’s expert balance of humor, heart, and excitement is real movie magic.

Knight and Day

Posted on November 30, 2010 at 12:05 pm

As refreshing as a cool drink of lemonade on a hot day, “Knight and Day” has just what we want from a big summer Hollywood summer movie: glamorous locations, even more glamorous movie stars, lots of crazy stunts and chases, a couple of romantic smooches, and of course some really big explosions.

It helps to have Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz, two stars with smiles that can fill a 40 foot screen. Wisely, screenwriter Patrick O’Neill and director James Mangold (“Walk the Line”) create the whole movie around what these two performers do best, which is have fun on screen and make it fun for us, too. Their effortless charm gives off enough sizzle to keep things going between stunts.

Cruise plays Roy Miller. We see right away that he’s really good at hand-to-hand combat and running and jumping and shooting. And apparently he is also very good at lying, which is why we do not know whether to believe him when he says he is the good guy. Neither does the person he says it to, a vintage car restoration expert named June (Cameron Diaz). They first run into each other, literally, at the airport. She is on her way to her sister’s wedding. Coincidentally, they bump into each other twice, once before going through TSA security, once on the other side. Don’t think it’s a coincidence? You just might be right!

Cruise and Diaz seem a bit relieved to have a chance to be silly in a summer popcorn movie, after less-than-successful efforts at serious drama (“Valkyrie” and “My Sister’s Keeper”). Both are adept at hitting the sweet spot that keeps the tone light, even in the midst of mowing down bad guys. There’s a lot that doesn’t work in this movie, including repeated scenes of characters being drugged (though Diaz makes a truth serum scene amusing with her matter-of-fact delivery), a distracting amount of jet-setting all over the globe, and literal overkill of legions of bad guys. That title, really? And surely they could do better for the talented Paul Dano (“There Will be Blood” and “Little Miss Sunshine”) than yet another nerdy genius with a universally coveted invention. But there is a lot that works. Diaz and Cruise have a natural chemistry and easy equality that is just plain entertaining. They bring enough conviction to the story to keep us believing and rooting for them without taking it so seriously that we start second-guessing the storyline. Supporting players include the always-welcome Viola Davis, Peter Sarsgaard, Celia Weston, and Marc Blucas. The stunts are expertly staged with Cruise and Diaz clearly right in the middle of it all, not checking their email back in the trailer while stuntmen do anything more strenuous than opening a door, and I have to say, they are summer movie crazynutsfun. It’s not as easy as it looks to combine action, comedy, and romance (I’m talking to you, Killers). But Diaz and Cruise show us how both characters want more of what the other has, without making too big a deal out of it. And they make it seem not just normal that you’d interrupt a deadly chase to capture a hugely valuable little doo-hicky to attend a wedding, but rather sweet.

Opening This Week: ‘Knight and Day’ and ‘Grown-Ups

Posted on June 20, 2010 at 5:16 pm

Just to make things confusing, the short film that precedes “Toy Story 3” is called “Day & Night” and the big summer movie opening up on Wednesday is called “Knight and Day.” One is a 3D animated short (more about that coming soon) and the other is a big Hollywood extravaganza with glamorous stars and locations and lots of chase scenes and explosions. Got it?
The other movie opening up this week is “Grown Ups” with Adam Sandler, Kevin James, Chris Rock, David Spade, and Rob Schneider as childhood friends who get together as adults with their families. The trailer includes both drug and potty jokes as well as an extended sequence with a character swinging on a rope, slamming into a tree, and falling down hard. So, seems like they’re not taking that title too seriously.

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Opening This Week