Fired Up

Posted on June 9, 2009 at 8:00 am

Yes, this is a dumb little teen sex comedy that repeatedly tries to generate hilarity with a cheer involving the initials of its title. Yes, it spends a lot of camera time focusing on tight little shorts on tight little tushes. Yes, it tries for the best of both worlds by presenting us with heroes who are major playas for most of the film with some lessons learned and spiritually enlarging experiences just in time for (and during) the closing credits. Yes, the high school junior heroes are played by actors who are at least a decade older than their characters. But as dumb little teen sex comedies go, this one could have been a lot worse.
Shawn (Nicholas D’Agosto) and Nick (Eric Christian Olsen) have just one goal — to get with as many lovely young ladies as possible as frequently as possible. Very effective singly, they are all but unstoppable with each other as wingmen. When it is time to go to El Paso for football training camp, they decide that rather than go to hot, dry, girl-free Texas they will instead go where the girls are, cheerleading camp. Though the camp is three weeks long, they plan to leave early to spend time at a friend’s vacation home.

Carly (Sarah Roemer), the captain of the cheerleaders, is a very attractive girl who is unprecedentedly impervious to Nick’s charm (and also impervious to the obnoxiousness of her pretentious boyfriend). Shawn does very well with the cheerleaders but increasingly finds himself attracted to the co-cheerleader coach (Milly Sims), even though she is married to her co-coach (Michael John Higgins, born to do spirit fingers) and, in his word, “old.” While Shawn and Nick are focused on getting as much as they can from as many girls as they can, the girls are focused on competing with the champion Panthers.
No surprises along the way — except perhaps how poorly the cheerleading routines are photographed and how much you can get away with in a PG-13 movie — but D’Agosto and Olsen have an easy rhythm and the movie wisely makes their comeuppances more sweet than humiliating. Its attempts to temper its homophobic humor are weak. But it nicely makes the point that the girls who get a boy’s attention and respect are those who respect themselves enough to insist on trust and affection before they will get involved.

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Comedy

The Last of the New York Jewish Movie Comedies?

Posted on June 3, 2009 at 8:00 am

New York Magazine uses the upcoming release of a new film by Woody Allen to consider whether this may be the last of the kind of comedy he exemplifies, the New York Jewish schnook, nebbish, and shlemiel comedy, focusing on “a brand of Jewish humor that has, in recent years, been all but scrubbed out–neurotic, depressive, abrasive, excluded.”
The movie is “Whatever Works,” directed by Allen and starring Larry David, like Allen a witer/director/performer specializing in being “neurotic, depressive, abrasive, excluded.” The film is a throwback to Allen’s earlier films. It is his first movie in years to be set in New York, the location for his best-loved movies. Allen not only named one of his most acclaimed films “Manhattan” but made the city one of the most appealing characters in the movies. Often his lead characters’ only unconflicted affection is directed at the city.
And those nostalgic for Allen’s earlier work have a special treat in store.

Whatever Works, which opens June 19, is both a greeting and a farewell, a film that marks Allen’s return to the city he abruptly abandoned, cinematically speaking, several years ago, as well as a reminder that a certain kind of comedy of which he was once the undisputed master has vanished and is being resurrected only because of an unlikely convergence of circumstances. Remember the Woody Allen of the seventies, the guy who several generations of New Yorkers decided was the comedic poet laureate of their era of the city? The man with whom they had a great first date (1973’s Sleeper) that deepened into a full-on relationship (1977’s Annie Hall) and then further enriched itself into true love (1979’s Manhattan), because we always fall in love with the one who makes us laugh? Whatever Works is, in essence, the missing movie from that period–the film that would have rounded out the New York phase of Allen’s early career if only he had made it.

The whole article is well worth reading and I especially enjoyed the chart with the history of almost 6000 years of Jewish humor.

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Understanding Media and Pop Culture

BFCA Summer Movie Predictions

Posted on June 2, 2009 at 10:00 am

The Broadcast Film Critics have announced their predictions for the movies of summer 2009:
Summer Blockbusters:
Star Trek
Up
Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince
Summer Sleepers:
Away We Go
500 Days of Summer
The Hurt Locker
Outstanding Performances of the Summer:
Johnny Depp in “Public Enemies”
Meryl Streep in “Julie and Julia”
Brad Pitt in “Inglorious Basterds”

Related Tags:

Understanding Media and Pop Culture

The Seven Little Foys

Posted on June 1, 2009 at 3:58 pm

B+

Lowest Recommended Age:	4th - 6th Grades
MPAA Rating:	Not Rated
Profanity:	None
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Drinking, smoking
Violence/ Scariness:	Sad death
Diversity Issues:	None
Date Released to Theaters:	1955
Date Released to DVD:	2007
Amazon.com ASIN:	B00004YS74

Bob Hope would have turned 106 this week, and his birthday and the upcoming Father’s Day reminded me of one of my favorite of his films. It’s also one of the least characteristic because he is playing a real-life character (as he would again two years later in “Beau James”) and even though the character was a performer and he does manage to get off some wisecracks, it is as close to a dramatic performance as he ever gave. He also said that the dance number was the hardest work he ever did, because he had to keep up with James Cagney reprising his portrayal of George M. Cohan of “Yankee Doodle Dandy.”

Hope plays Eddie Foy, Sr., a vaudevillian whose only way to care for his seven children is to put them into his act and take them on the road. The fact that he barely knew the kids was of no more relevance than the fact that they had no talent.

Foy, as played by Hope, was not a great father. But he was devoted to his children in his own way, and I have special affection for this film. A couple of other points worth noting: fans of the old “Father Knows Best” series will recognize Billy Gray as one of the kids. And take a look at “Yankee Doodle Dandy,” too — you will see the real-life Eddie Foy, Jr. appearing as his father opposite James Cagney as his long-time friendly rival Cohan, and as the bookie in “Bells are Ringing.”

First Shots from ‘New Moon’

Posted on May 28, 2009 at 8:00 am

Check out Entertainment Weekly’s gallery of shots from the set of “New Moon.” They say that even though Edward does not play much of a role in the book, fans have been assured that the popular Robert Pattinson will play a significant role in the film.
But this film is where we — and Bella — really get to know Jacob, played by Taylor Lautner, who put on 25 pounds of muscle for the role. I interviewed Taylor four years ago when he appeared in The Adventures of SharkBoy and LavaGirl in 3-D, written and directed by Robert Rodriguez (the “Spy Kids” series). At that time Lautner had already won three junior world karate championships. You can see in the interview the qualities that made it possible for him to persuade the producers that he could convince an audience that he had grown up as quickly as Jacob does in the book.

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