Marmaduke

Posted on August 31, 2010 at 8:00 am

Those who come to “Marmaduke” eager for the humor that comes from the intestinal distress of others don’t have to wait too long. The first of many instances of doggy-doo jokes comes about three minutes into the film.

Marmaduke has been running in the comic section for more than half a century. It has just one panel and just one joke: Marmaduke is a very, very big dog who brings chaos to those who try to impose order in the world.

In this movie adaptation, Marmaduke and his family move to California and Marmaduke has to learn how to make new friends over at the dog park, which like middle school — very cliquey. He is quickly befriended by the independent-minded Mazie (voice of Emma Stone) but wants very much to be accepted by the pedigreed pooches, led by alpha dog Bosco (voice of Keifer Sutherland) and his lovely girlfriend Jezebel (voice of Fergie from the Black Eyed Peas). He treats his friends badly to become part of the cool group and learns that he has made a very bad mistake. Meanwhile, he is also getting in trouble at home with his human family: the always-appealing Lee Pace (“Pushing Daisies”) as an affectionate but distracted father and should-be-a-leading-lady Judy Greer. Released from an endless series of quippy best friend roles in an endless stream of chick flicks — she has friended more Jennifers and Jessicas on screen than can be found in all of Facebook — it is especially disappointing that she has an even smaller role here. She seems oddly passive, barely noticing what is going on in her home other than punishing her husband for punishing Marmaduke.

Not that kids who see this movie will care at all about that. They want to see some unbridled id creating chaos. They want to see cute dogs making big messes and still being loved, some dog-doo jokes and a silly dance. They want to see a daddy learning a lesson about how it is more important to listen to your kids than to work. They will enjoy all of these things, but for the adults who accompany them it will be a long 87 minutes.

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Comedy For the Whole Family

The Back-Up Plan

Posted on August 24, 2010 at 8:00 am

This movie’s best use could be population control. No one who sees it will want to get pregnant or raise children. It could also be used to show aspiring screenwriters what not to do.

Other than that, I can’t think of any reason not to ship it back to the studio and recycle the film stock. If you were planning to go see this film in theaters, I hope you have a back-up plan.

Zoe (Jennifer Lopez) has decided that not having a man in her life should not mean she does not have a child in her life. So, she goes to a doctor (Robert Klein) to get artificial insemination. And that very day, she meets Stan, a guy who could be The One (bland Alex O’Loughlin).

It could have worked. But instead of giving any thought to the interesting possibilities of the story, it is just another boneheaded replay of the dumbest sitcom pregnancy and parenting cliches. They scrape the bottom of the barrel and then they dig a little deeper. Zoe barfs. She gets super-hungry. She has hormonal swings. She gets depressed about getting fat. She worries that he won’t love her any more. And the costume designer seems to have been heavily influenced by “Flashdance.” Lopez’s bare shoulder appears so often it deserves its own trailer. O’Laughlin’s bare chest is so crucial to his performance it deserves an agent.

Meanwhile the movie wastes the time and talent of two brilliant comic actresses in supporting roles, Jennifer Elise Cox (unforgettable as Jan in the Brady Bunch movies and in one of the funniest scenes ever on “Will and Grace“) and Micheaela Watkins (Hoda Kotb and the blogger on “Saturday Night Live”). The adorable Melissa McCarthy (“Gilmore Girls”) and the very funny Anthony Anderson are stuck in roles with lines that pull them down like quicksand. Only Linda Lavin (television’s “Alice”) manages to maintain some dignity as Zoe’s Nana, engaged for decades (and if you guess her fiance is “Happy Days'” Mr. C., Tom Bosley, you are correctamundo).

There isn’t one fresh or believable or even sympathetic moment in the whole mess. Zoe and Stan are supposed to be endearing. She left her successful corporate job (with plenty of money socked away) for a cuddly little pet store and is so tender-hearted that her own pet is a dog who needs to have his back half supported on wheels. Stan lives on a farm, makes cheese, and is studying to get his college degree. But these are check-lists. They don’t add up to personalities. The movie clearly thinks these people are far more appealing to each other and to us than they really are. If first-time director Alan Poul and screenwriter Kate Angelo want us to care about these characters separately or as a couple, it might make sense to give us some reason to believe that they have the ability to care about anything other than themselves.

For one thing, this is a movie about pregnancy in which no one much likes babies or children. Zoe has a friend who repeatedly claims to hate her four children and shows no sense of responsibility or affection for them. Stan has a friend who describes parenthood as: “Awful, awful, awful, awful, and then something happens. And then awful….” Zoe goes to a single mother’s group with one member who insists on having the entire group in the room as she gives birth in a kiddie pool. Her grimaces and grunts are supposed to be funny. So is a dog chewing up a pregnancy test stick. So is a single mother who insists on breast-feeding a three-year-old. So is the water breaking in the middle of a conga line at a wedding. Not, not, not, not, not. At the exact moment we should be saying “Awwww….” we are thinking about calling Child Protective Services. Or Audience Protective Services.

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City Island

Posted on August 23, 2010 at 8:00 am

B+

Lowest Recommended Age:	Mature High Schooler
MPAA Rating:	Rated PG-13 for sexual content, smoking, and language
Profanity:	Strong and crude language
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Smoking, drinking
Violence/ Scariness:	Tense family confrontations
Diversity Issues:	None
Date Released to Theaters:	April 26, 2010
Date Released to DVD:	August 24, 2010
Amazon.com ASIN:	B0036TGT8Y

This warm-hearted dysfunctional family comedy-drama benefits from an exceptionally strong cast, including producer Andy Garcia as the father, Julianna Margulies as the mother, and Steven Strait as the young man just released from prison who sets off a series of revelations.

Everyone in the Rizzo family is hiding something. Daughter Vivian (Garcia’s real-life daughter, Dominik GarcÃa-Lorido) is not in college as her parents think. She is supporting herself as a stripper. Her brother Vince Jr. (Ezra Miller) is struggling with his desire to see heavy women eat, especially his next door neighbor, who has a website called “Feeding Denise” and one of his classmates. Mom Joyce (Margulies) has not given up smoking. But it is Vince, Sr. who has the really big secrets. One, he has a son from a relationship before he met Joyce and he has just met the young man for the first time, at the prison where he is a corrections officer (don’t call him a guard) and his son (Strait, superb as Tony) is about to be released. Two, he wants to be an actor. He is taking classes with Michael Malakov (Alan Arkin) and has made friends with a classmate, Molly (Emily Mortimer).

Writer-director Raymond De Felitta has obvious affection for his characters and he keeps the developments from going too far. The situations may be outrageous, but deft performances keep the battles from being shrill and the situation more fairy tale than soap opera. This is one of those little indies that inspired a great deal of enthusiasm from its audience and should make even more fans on DVD.

Nanny McPhee Returns

Posted on August 19, 2010 at 5:58 pm

Lowest Recommended Age:	4th - 6th Grades
MPAA Rating:	Rated PG for rude homor, some language, and mild thematic elements
Profanity:	Some crude schoolyard language
Alcohol/ Drugs:	None
Violence/ Scariness:	References to wartime violence and apparent tragic death of a father, bomb dropped on home, parental divorce, comic peril and violence
Diversity Issues:	None
Date Released to Theaters:	August 20, 2010

For the first half of this movie, the children in the audience were completely on board, laughing when the children on screen were covered with mud and various kinds of animal poop, delighting in seeing them naughtily fighting with each other and then, when Nanny McPhee (screenwriter Emma Thompson) stamps her magical staff on the floor, each fighting himself. By the time the piglets were doing an Esther Williams-style synchronized swim number, the kids in the theater were extremely happy.

And then something happened that took the movie in another direction and the audience enthusiasm evaporated. This sequel to the 2006 original places the character inspired by Christianna Brand’s Nurse Matilda stories in a WWII setting as Isabel Green (Maggie Gyllenhaal) is trying to keep the family farm going with the help of her three children while her husband is fighting in the war. It is quite a struggle, especially because her brother-in-law is doing everything he can to make her fail so she will have to sell the farm. He has to pay his gambling debts or, two female enforcers tell him, they will remove his liver. Isabel also has to care for her niece and nephew, sent out of London to keep them away from the bombing during the Blitz. They are snobbish and selfish and there is an instant war between the cousins.

Enter Nanny McPhee, all in black, with a body like a linebacker, two enormous moles, a snaggletooth, a jowly chinline, and a bulbous nose. She explains she has been sent by the Army and she goes to work, banging her staff and bringing on the magic to teach the children five lessons. When she is not wanted but needed, she must stay. When she is wanted but not needed, she must go.

Nanny McPhee teaches the children to stop fighting and to share and cooperate. But then things get much worse when they get some very bad news and they must show resolve, courage, and faith before she will be no longer needed.

The movie is very uneven in tone and in quality, with charming nonsense colliding with what appears to be devastating tragedy. Children young enough to enjoy the silly pratfalls will be uncomfortable and possibly upset by discussions of death, war, and divorce. There is something jarring, even in a fantasy film, about children having to defuse a bomb as the adults are helpless. The timing is off so that even some of the comic set-pieces fail, like an extended bit about disappearing pens and a gruesome all-female hit squad who wander in like extras from “Sweeny Todd.” Thompson is always magic on screen, but here she is more wanted than needed.

The Last Song

Posted on August 17, 2010 at 8:15 am

Miley Cyrus shows us how her reach exceeds her grasp in “The Last Song,” an attempt to move past Hannah Montana. She has become Disney’s most valuable property through the force of her personality, comic timing, and way with a pop song. But pop princesses grow up, though usually not quite as quickly as they want to. And valuable properties are hard to turn down. So when one of the world’s biggest superstars-turned-brand wants to make a grown-up movie, she gets her way.

That is why “The Last Song” plays like a check-list of everything a 17-year old would like to make as an antidote to the perpetually sunny Hannah Montana rather than a movie that works. After the sugary Disney Channel hijinks, she gets to play something a tiny bit edgy, a sulky teenager with a pierced nose, sent to live with her estranged father for the summer. Nicholas Sparks, for the first time adapting one of his own books, supplies his brand of synthetic syrup — broken hearts must find love amidst devastating losses, preferably through some exchanges of mail, all of this near a body of water with a beach.

Cyrus plays Veronica (Ronnie), a recent high school graduate who is so angry at just about everything and everyone that she is refusing to go to Julliard in the fall even though she is so talented that they accepted despite her refusal to play the piano. They just knew how great she was and accepted her anyway. Her mother (Kelly Preston) drops her off with her little brother Jonah (Bobby Coleman in the film’s most natural performance) at their dad’s beach house. Jonah is thrilled to be there but Ronnie is still angry with their father (Greg Kinnear as Steve) for leaving them and refuses to have anything to do with him as she had refused to read his letters.

Ronnie meets a cute guy named Will (Liam Hemsworth) and they bond over protecting a nest of sea turtle eggs. A falling-in-love montage is quickly followed by a trying-on-clothes-in-the-vintage-shop montage, which at least has the advantage of giving us a break from the dialogue and plot developments. But before long, the screen is littered with complications as Will and Ronnie have to cope with divided loyalties and then with something much more serious.

It’s all pretty enough, and Sparks is an expert at manipulative melodrama. Cyrus has a likable, unforced screen presence but does not have the training or focus to make Ronnie real or show us any change more significant than the switch from black to pastels and the disappearance of the nose stud. The screenplay feels episodic and scattered, like a collection of discount greeting cards. And the movie feels like a very expensive screen test for a star who needs to learn that sitcom skills are not enough to make a movie drama work.