In Time

Posted on October 27, 2011 at 6:00 pm

In the future, according to this film, our currency will not be money but time. Everyone gets 25 years. Then the clock starts ticking down. If you have not earned, begged, borrowed, stolen, or inherited time, you die.

Everything is bought and sold for time. A millionaire has a million years saved up and can use them to buy a mansion, hire bodyguards, and postpone death, perpetually looking 25 years old. Everyone else lives — literally — one day at a time.

Writer/director Andrew Niccol likes provocative ideas (he wrote the similarly dystopic “Gattaca” as well as “The Truman Show” and the underrated “Lord of War” and “S1mone”) and this is a good one, well timed with themes that resonate with the 99%/Occupy Wall Street/collapse of the Greek economy issues. People treat and speak of time in this world the way we do with money. Prostitutes offer ten minutes in exchange for an hour of extra life. Toll roads charge in years. People speak of those who “come from time” (inherited wealth) and a nouveau riche character is spotted because he moves fast (“not in everything,” he responds coolly). Those who are used to wealth move very slowly, first because they have literally all the time in the world and second because the one thing that can kill them is a violent accident — or murder.

Justin Timberlake plays Will, a guy from the poor side of town whose fury at being unable to get more time for his mother (the three years younger than the real-life Timberlake Olivia Wilde) makes him determined to topple the entire system. Amanda Seyfried in a red Dora the Explorer-style bob is Sylvia, the wealthy girl he takes hostage until like a cross between Patty Hearst, Bonnie Parker, and Maid Marian, she joins him on a crime spree, stealing time and giving it to those who are running out. Cillian Murphy plays the “Timekeeper” who is chasing them, and “Mad Men’s” Vincent Kartheiser plays Sylvia’s father, who has all the time in the world and wants to keep it that way.

The production design contributes a lot to the story with retro cars and phones in the poorer communities and banks like citadels, and Roger Deakins’ cinematography makes the world of the story look bleak but not hopeless. Timberlake and Seyfried are both talented performers who are a bit out of their element in a sci-fi action film. The idea is better than the execution and it gets rather silly in the last half hour. Until then it is kept aloft by a timely concept that strikes pretty close to home.

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Friends With Benefits

Posted on July 22, 2011 at 6:45 pm

“Shut up, Katherine Heigl,” says our heroine, as she passes by a wall of posters for another fungible romantic comedy that should be sued for deceptive advertising. Jamie (Mila Kunis) is an executive recruiter who wants to believe in love but has had a series of relationships with guys who took her heart and stomped that sucker flat. Dylan (Justin Timberlake) is the hotshot design guy she recruited to move from a web job in California to GQ in New York. While Jamie wants intimacy too much, Dylan wants to avoid it.

And while we all want a good, old-fashioned (but not too old-fashioned) date movie romantic comedy, we don’t want the same old Jennifers and Jessicas getting into the same old situations. The problem is that it is harder and harder to find reasons for keeping the couple that the audience knows is destined to be together from having sex for a whole 100 minutes. And so we get the second movie in seven months that tries to turn the usual story upside down. Let’s let them have sex right away but then learn how much they love each other. It works better here than in No Strings Attached because it has a cleverer script and better chemistry. There’s a terrific beginning as we see Jamie and Dylan on the phone with her waiting in front of a theater and him explaining that he isn’t really late. We think they’re talking to each other when it turns out they’re on opposite sides of the country and both about to be dumped (great cameos by Andy Samberg and Emma Stone). So Dylan is recruited by Jamie for the GQ job and as she sells him on New York, complete with a flash mob in Times Square, they have the rhythms of a couple who are destined to be together. But in the immutable laws of movie romance, both must learn important lessons (and look gorgeous while doing so) before they figure that out. So they decide to have sex as friends without becoming boyfriend and girlfriend.

It’s a movie with a couple of references to “Seinfeld,” but apparently everyone missed the 1991 episode called “The Deal,” in which long-time exes-turned friends Elaine and Jerry decide they can have sex without an emotional attachment or romance. It doesn’t work, and there is something a bit off-putting about characters who think it can. Elaine and Jerry were famously “no learning, no hugging” people who were hilariously superficial and self-involved. But Jamie and Dylan are supposed to get us on their side and talking and behaving like people for whom sex does not mean anything creates a hurdle we have difficulty getting over. While the film avoids some of the pitfalls of the romantic comedy formula, it falls into others, with sketchily-drawn back-stories and distracting detours like an un-funny part for Shaun White and a silly repeated joke about whether pilots are important in landing a plane. Kunis and Timberlake are as great on screen as individuals and as a team and there are some funny and entertaining moments, especially when Dylan explains his childhood affection for Kris Kross. Ultimately, though, it is as formulaic as the movie-within-a-movie they watch together. That one stars Jason Segal and Rashida Jones and has a sly dig to the fake NY locations filmed in LA and some outtakes over the end credits. It — or something just like it — should be in theaters soon.

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Comedy Romance

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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Comedy School

Yogi Bear

Posted on March 22, 2011 at 7:38 pm

Yogi Bear (voice of Dan Aykroyd) is genuinely perplexed by the suggestion that he might want to forage for food and catch fish with his paws. “Isn’t that kind of unsanitary?”

He may live in the woods, but for Yogi, star of the 1960’s series of cartoons from Hanna-Barbera, that does not mean his life has to be bereft of civilization. He has a best friend named Boo Boo with a natty bow tie (voice of Justin Timberlake!). His cave is equipped with a soda machine. He is never seen without his hat, collar, and tie. And he is a well-known aficionado of fine dining. His preferred cuisine is the contents of picnic baskets brought by visitors to Jellystone Park, the campground and nature preserve that is his home. He loves picnic baskets so much, he’s given them an extra syllable, to hold onto the word just a little longer. He calls them “pick-a-nic baskets,” and they are to him what the grail was to Galahad, the whale was to Ahab, and the Road Runner is to Wile E. Coyote.

But to the frustrated Ranger Smith (the always-likable Tom Cavanagh), Yogi’s antics make it impossible for him to have the nice, peaceful, orderly park he dreams of. “There’s no better place on earth,” he sighs, “except without him.” And Smith can’t figure out how to talk to the pretty nature nerd who has arrived to make a documentary about the talking bear in Jellystone Park (the always-adorable Anna Faris as Rachel).

Soon, though, Smith has a bigger problem. The Mayor (slimy Andrew Daly) and his aide (elfin Nathan Corddry) want rescue the city’s budget by privatizing the park and selling off the logging rights. Ranger Smith has just one week to get enough money from increased admissions to the park to save the day.

Yogi Bear began as one segment of the 1958 animated series “Huckleberry Hound.” He quickly eclipsed the other characters, who are all but forgotten (I don’t see “Pixie, Trixie, and Mr. Jinks: The Movie” coming to a multiplex any time soon), and soon became a headliner with his own series. Yogi’s adventures were filled with the same silly slapstick, but he had a special quality that endeared him to kids. They identified with his place midway between the animal world of the forest and Smith’s ultra-civilized world of a uniformed, rule-enforcing (but always-forgiving) grown-up.

Yogi often brags that he is “smarter than the average bear,” but he often outsmarts himself, allowing kids to feel that they are a step ahead of him. As often in comedy, especially for kids, a lot of the humor in cartoons comes from ineptitude and foolishness. Children, who are constantly surrounded by things they do not understand love to see characters who are even more confounded by the world around them. In this film, Yogi may be smart enough to design a flying contraption. But his efforts to persuade Ranger Smith that it is not intended for stealing picnic baskets fails when the Ranger points out that printed across its stern is “Baskitnabber 2000.”

Moments like these are classic Yogi, but it is still an uneven transition to a live-action feature film from the very simplified story-line and animation of a seven-minute hand-drawn cartoon. The running time, computer graphics, and 3D effects overwhelm the slightness of the material, especially when it departs from the core relationship of Yogi and Ranger Smith. The story drags in the middle, when the junior ranger (T.J. Miller), chafing because Ranger Smith won’t let him do anything but sort maps, agrees to sabotage the efforts to keep the park going in exchange for a promotion. Smith’s inept efforts to romance the pretty film-maker are weak and it hardly helps when Yogi offers his advice to Smith about, ahem, marking his territory.

These are what I call “lunchbox movies.” We’ve had a string of big-budget multiplex fodder featuring whatever character was on some studio executive’s second grade lunchbox (Garfield, Alvin and the Chipmunks, Inspector Gadget). They toss in some potty humor for the little kids and some boombox oldies to amuse the parents (Sir Mix-a-Lot will be cashing yet another royalty check). But Yogi and his pic-a-nic basket — and the kids and parents looking for a holiday treat — deserve better.

The Social Network

Posted on January 10, 2011 at 8:00 am

A-

Lowest Recommended Age:	High School
MPAA Rating:	Rated PG-13 for sexual content, drug and alcohol use and language
Profanity:	Very strong language
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Drinking, drug use
Violence/ Scariness:	Tense confrontations and charges of betrayal
Diversity Issues:	A theme of the movie, diverse characters
Date Released to Theaters:	October 1, 2010
Date Released to DVD:	January 11, 2011
Amazon.com ASIN:	B0034G4P7G

Change is not polite. The bigger the change, the more likely that it is messy and painful and ugly. Even its beginnings are often disturbingly uninspired and uninspiring. Despite what Hollywood and history books tell us, change is less often sparked by a passion for justice or a vision of a better world. More often, even the most beneficial change is inspired by ambition, competition, revenge, spite, wanting to seem cool, or the most frequently compelling reason of all — some romantic companionship or a reasonable approximation thereof or at least to appear cool in front of whichever gender you are hoping to attract.
And it is change that is the subject of this movie. Don’t call it “The Facebook Movie.” It’s about a small group of college students who almost accidentally create a product that almost accidentally becomes a phenomenon. As screenwriter Aaron Sorkin has said repeatedly in interviews, it could just as well have been the invention of a toaster that he was writing about. Sorkin, whose past work includes “Charlie Wilson’s War,” “The West Wing,” and a Broadway play about the invention of television, uses the origin of Facebook as a way to engage with classic themes of loyalty, innovation, greed, class, and the challenges of relationships of all kinds.
In a meta-touch, the movie’s shifting points of view effectively crowd-source the storyline and its own willingness to bend the facts acknowledges that there is no one way to tell the story. However, even with the inevitable scenes of pale dudes staring intently into computer screens while they furiously bang away at the keyboards, the story is grounded in the same emotions depicted in ancient Greek drama — ambition, rebellion, anger, betrayal. It depicts the contrast between the arrogant brash and very young upstart who starts a spite project because he can’t be accepted by girls or clubs and the arrogant smug club members who assume that all they need to do is cite the school handbook to the university president (probably once brash, now smug, perpetually arrogant). Is there an underdog in all of this that we’re supposed to root for?
No one is better at writing dialogue for smart people than Sorkin. In the opening scene Harvard student Mark Zuckerberg (Jesse Eisenberg of “Zombieland” and “The Squid and the Whale”) and his girlfriend are on a date. They have a blisteringly fast exchange about status that shows he has some issues when it comes to navigating contact with other humans. She dumps him. Frustrated, bitter, and a little drunk, he goes back to his dorm room and impulsively does two small things that will have seismic consequences. In olden days, someone in that situation might go back to the dorm and trash the now-ex to his friends. But this was 2002, so instead he wrote something nasty about her on his blog. And then he decided to create a mean “hot or not” website by posting student directory photos online. This gets him into trouble with the school. And it brings him to the attention of three upperclassmen, in both senses of the word. They have the dazzlingly casual arrogance of members of the most exclusive of the final clubs. Two of them are gigantic twins who are on the Olympic crew team and look like they walked out of a J.C. Leyendecker ad for Arrow shirts.
They ask Zuckerberg to do the programming for a website that will post and connect all of the students at the school. He brings on his best friend, Eduardo Saverin (Andrew Garfield of “Never Let Me Go” and the upcoming Spider-Man reboot), as chief financial officer — meaning that he provides the initial $1000 in start-up money.
A few months later, “thefacebook.com” is up and running and growing exponentially. Zuckerberg combined the appeal of a blog (students can express their feelings or describe their activities) and the connectivity of a computer network. When a classmate awkwardly asks Zuckerberg whether a girl in their class is dating anyone, Zuckerberg adds a function to the site that lets participants state their availability and interest.
There is change that comes because people want something. And then there is the more profound change that comes about because of something people didn’t even know they wanted. Facebook did not exist ten years ago. Today it has more than 500 million members around the world.
Zuckerberg meets Napster co-founder Sean Parker (a seductive Justin Timberlake), who entices him with a combination of glamour and venture capital. He plays the role in this movie that Lampwick does in “Pinnochio;” taking him to the fun place that turns little boys into donkeys. But he is right about some important decisions, including dropping the “the” and raising money from backers rather than advertisers. And it turns out there are two ways to become a cool guy; you can be accepted by the guys who are cool or you can be the one to redefine what cool is.
But who created Facebook? Zuckerberg is sued by the upperclassmen, who never participated after proposing the initial idea and by Saverin, who is pushed out after Parker comes on board. The movie allows us to make up our own mind. And then it ends with a reminder that even an enormous innovation in making human connections cannot substitute for the real thing.
The performances are all top-notch. Eisenberg is superb, playing not the real Mark Zuckerberg but the character created by Sorkin, hyper-alert and obtuse, his voice both taut and tremulous. Armie Hammer is outstanding as both of the towering twin brothers and Rooney Mara (soon to play Lisbeth Salander in “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo”) makes a strong impression in her brief appearance as the girl who starts the whole thing by dumping Zuckerberg. Sorkin perfectly captures the cadences of the Harvard community, including a gem of a cameo by Douglas Urbanski as Harvard president Larry Summers. Director David Fincher minimizes the scenes of people staring intently at computer screens while madly banging away on a keyboard to keep this movie about the power, the lure, the fragility, and the importance of the social network of the analog world. It might inspire the next Facebook, but it is more likely to inspire people to log off.

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