Our Idiot Brother

Posted on August 25, 2011 at 6:00 pm

Lowest Recommended Age:	Mature High Schooler
MPAA Rating:	Rated R for sexual content including nudity and for language throughout
Profanity:	Very strong language
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Drinking, marijuana, character goes to prison for giving marijuana to a policeman
Violence/ Scariness:	Comic peril
Diversity Issues:	Diverse characters
Date Released to Theaters:	August 26, 2011
Amazon.com ASIN:	B004UXUWEC

You can’t really make a bad movie with Paul Rudd, Elizabeth Banks, Rashida Jones, Kathryn Hahn, Adam Scott, Zooey Deschanel, Emily Mortimer, and Steve Coogan. They are seven of the most able and appealing performers of our era. But it turns out that does not necessarily guarantee a good movie, either. The actors have a lot more fun than the audience in this light but strange tale of a man whose irrepressibly sunny and guileless nature makes his angsty sisters frustrated, angry, and then, inexplicably refreshed.

Rudd plays Ned, a leftover hippie who grows organic produce with his girlfriend (Hahn). By inclination and by choice he expects the best intentions from everyone. So, he gives a stranger on the subway some cash to hold onto while he organizes his things. And when a uniformed cop asks him for some marijuana, he hands it over. That one results in some jail time, and when he returns, he finds he has lost his girlfriend, his home, and his dog, Willie Nelson. So, he goes back home, where he briefly stays with his mother and then each of his sisters, creating chaos at every stop.

Liz (Mortimer) is married to a snobbish and self-centered documentary filmmaker (Coogan) and they have two children. Liz is passionate about providing a cloyingly wholesome environment for her children (they are named River and Echo) and has not noticed that her husband is having an affair with the subject of his latest film. Ned breaks River’s finger and, worse, messes up his crucial admissions interview for a tony private school.

He also disrupts the lives of the ambitious Miranda (Banks) who works at Vanity Fair, thwarting her big break by refusing to let her print a story told to him in confidence by a socialite, and flighty Natalie (Deschanel), by revealing to her girlfriend (Jones) that Natalie has been unfaithful with a man and is pregnant.

Jesse Peretz (son of former Harvard professor and New Republic publisher Marty Peretz) directed, from a screenplay by his sister, Evgenia Peretz, a writer for Vanity Fair, and her husband David Schisgall, a documentary filmmaker who has worked with Errol Morris. Given the sibling bond on and off-screen it is especially disconcerting that there is no sense of the chemistry between family members. These characters never show the kind of rhythms and short-cuts in communication that come from decades of shared experience or the affections and retro rivalries of adult family members. It would have been interesting to get a sense of what the family dynamic was like and how it produced characters do different in their priorities and strengths. The script feels more like a chart than a storyline, with each character selected to represent a different New York type. The actors have a lot of fun creating their characters but there is not one believable relationship between any of them, except perhaps Ned’s with the hippie who replaced him at the farm. Peretz never establishes a consistent tone and the reconciliation and appreciation at the end is forced and awkward.

Ned may be right about expecting the best from everyone, but as he learns in the film and we learn about the Peretzes, sometimes they let you down.

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How Do You Know

Posted on March 24, 2011 at 10:00 am

Lisa (Reese Witherspoon) and George Madison (Paul Rudd) are both nice people and team players. And that is why they end up on a horrible date on what is for each of them the worst night of their lives.

It’s the worst night because both of them have been cut from their teams. That’s literally the case for Lisa, a 31-year-old professional women’s softball team. Being the hardest working and most supportive player is not enough when she’s a second slower getting to first base than she used to be. She makes everyone around her better. “The intangibles are everything,” urges the assistant coach. But they don’t score runs. The upbeat little post-it note aphorisms Lisa has covering her bathroom mirror do not provide any guidance. They can remind her to be determined, but she is no longer clear on what she should be determined about. And although she tells her sort of boyfriend, a player for the Washington National baseball team (Owen Wilson) that she doesn’t want to talk about her feelings, she is a little disconcerted when he tells her that is his preference.

George, a top executive at a corporation founded by his father (Jack Nicholson), has been informed by the company lawyer that he is under investigation and on his own in finding and paying a lawyer to defend him from possible fraud charges. And his girlfriend, a physics professor, dumps him with cheery efficiency. It is a lot to process. And he doesn’t want to process it. So, why not call that blind date prospect he had put aside when he thought he had a girlfriend?

As terrible as the date is — they ultimately decide that it is better they don’t speak at all — they sort of enjoy it. And we do, too, because writer/director James L. Brooks (“Broadcast News,” “Terms of Endearment,” “As Good as It Gets”) is very good at exactly that: showing us a world of flawed people dealing with messy, complicated, and painful challenges in a manner that draws us in and keeps us on their side.

There is a lot that does not work. It completely fails in portraying with two subjects I know very well: securities law (note, Mr. Brooks, that’s “securities” plural — “security law” is more like TSA pat-down challenges) and Washington D.C. (no place in Washington is an hour and ten minutes from any other place, even on the bus). George’s father is a character even Jack Nicholson can’t make anything more than a highly artificial narrative inconvenience. The magnificently talented Kathryn Hahn (please, someone give her a worthy role) does her best in a part that is both over- and under-written as George’s very pregnant and very loyal secretary. One of the big turning-point speeches doesn’t deliver the punch it sets us up to expect.

A lot of people are not going to like this movie. But I did because for me he got a lot right. Audiences expecting a conventional structure and tone will be disappointed. I like a movie that is, like its leads, endearingly messy and subverts our genre expectations. Brooks colors outside the lines. There is more happening around the edges of this movie than happens in the middle of the screen of most — George’s problem is more than just a topical reference. And the difference between a male and female professional athlete is not addressed; it’s just there.

Brooks’ dialogue is always a great pleasure. Rudd, one of the most engaging of actors, has never been better. Watch his face carefully in the elevator scene, when he thinks his world has collapsed and then looks up to see that the girl from the awful silent date is there. The mixture of emotions is superbly handled. Witherspoon is revelatory as a woman who relied on an all-encompassing structure with answers for everything and now realizes there were questions she did not even know she had. And if that makes us question our own conventional notion of what we know, well, it just shows you that the intangibles really are everything.

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Drama Romance

Dinner for Schmucks

Posted on January 4, 2011 at 8:00 am

The truest comedy is the laugh of recognition and enlightenment. You won’t find much of that in this crass and crude remake of the French film, “The Dinner Game.” What you will find instead is that easier and far less satisfying category of humor — the smug laughter at someone’s expense. The problem is that this movie’s entire premise is that making fun of people who have dorky personalities is, as expressed twice by characters we are supposed to identify with, “messed up.” Therefore, it is especially icky that it tries to have it both ways, asking us to laugh at the bozos and then asking us to feel superior to the movie characters who are doing the exactly same thing.

In the French film, the main character is a wealthy man who has a competition with his friends to see who can bring the biggest loser to dinner. And so of course he has to learn some lessons about who the loser really is. But this is America, and our good guy can’t really be a big old meanie, even at the beginning of the film. So, we begin by casting Mr. Nice Guy, Paul Rudd as Tim, an analyst for a private equity firm desperate to get a promotion. His good-guy reluctance takes most of the emotional and narrative energy out of the story. When the big boss (Bruce Greenwood) gives him a chance to move up and he finds out it involves participating in the dinner-with-a-dork competition, he instantly and correctly identifies this as messed up, but then, when he literally bumps into a perfect specimen, he decides it must be fate, and invites him to the dinner.

The dork (I refuse to call him a shmuck, which is a Yiddish term that literally means a part of the male anatomy and metaphorically means a bad — as in untrustworthy — guy, not a foolish or nerdy one) is Barry, played by Steve Carell, having way too much fun with his fake teeth. Barry’s hobby is stuffing dead mice (yes, he is an amateur taxidermist, just like Norman Bates) and creating dioramas for them based on classic works of art and historical events. But once again, the movie can’t make its mind up whose side it is on, and the idea may be appalling but the renditions are actually quite lovely. (In the French film, the guy makes replicas of famous buildings from matchsticks.)

Despite Carell’s best efforts, Barry is not a character. He is just an engine for creating humiliating experiences for Tim. The essential inconsistency of his behavior and capacity obstructs any comedic pleasure in predicting what is going to happen. It’s as though we have to be continually re-introduced to him. On the other hand, one-note supporting characters like Tim’s stalker would-be girlfriend (wasting the talents of the delectable Lucy Punch), Barry’s colleague (Zach Galifianakis), and an oleaginous artist (Jermaine Clement) quickly become tiresome.

Here’s an idea for a movie — how about the story of a talented French writer/director who meets with Hollywood executives who want to re-make his excellent comedies like “The Toy,” “The Dinner Game,” “The Tall Blond Man With One Black Shoe,” and many more, into over-budgeted and under-funny comedies by clumsy Americans. Now, that is a dinner for schmucks.

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Comedy Remake

I Could Never Be Your Woman

Posted on April 15, 2009 at 6:29 pm

Usually when a movie has a limited release with no ad support it means that test audiences hated it and the studio has decided to cut their losses. But once in a while it has nothing whatsoever to do with the quality of the film and that is the case with I Could Never Be Your Woman. The title is awful, but the script and cast are great and the movie is a quiet gem.

Michelle Pfeiffer plays Rosie, a television studio executive responsible for a sitcom called “You Go, Girl!” with a demanding star. The show’s appeal is fading and its cast has outgrown their roles — though they are still playing teenagers, most of them are married with children. In order to refresh the show and broaden its appeal, Rosie adds a new cast member, Adam (Paul Rudd), an appealing and talented young actor. He is interested in her but she is reluctant to respond because he is younger than she is and because she is still protective of her feelings following her divorce. Rosie’s relationship with Adam is endearing and appealing, but in every way the heart of the story is Rosie’s relationship with her middle-school-age daughter Izzie (Saoirse Ronan, the young girl who was nominated for an Oscar in “Atonement”). Rosie counsels Izzie about life in general and a boy in school in particular and the tenderness and understanding of that relationship is beautifully conveyed.

But it never got any support from the studio. Even the trailer doesn’t do justice to the film. It looks sit-com-y.

The movie got caught in completely unrelated financial problems at its studio and never got a real chance in theaters. I am hoping that Rudd’s recent success will inspire audiences to seek out this film. It is uneven (though I love Tracy Ullman, I would have cut her scenes as Mother Nature). But it has a deft script, smooth direction from Amy Heckerling (“Clueless”), world-class performances, and a real feeling for the mother-daughter relationship. And Pfeiffer is an extraordinary actress. This film really gives her a chance to shine as a professional, a mother, an ex-wife, and a woman who is surprised and delighted to find out that she can still be surprised and delighted. Audiences will find themselves surprised and delighted, too.

I Love You, Man

Posted on March 19, 2009 at 6:00 pm

B-

Lowest Recommended Age:	Adult
MPAA Rating:	Rated R for pervasive language, including crude and sexual references
Profanity:	Extremely strong and crude language
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Drinking and drunkenness, smoking, drug humor
Violence/ Scariness:	Comic violence
Diversity Issues:	None
Date Released to Theaters:	March 20, 2009

Paul Rudd is a national treasure. His smaller roles were a highlight of movies like “The 40 Year Old Virgin,” “Knocked Up,” and “Anchorman.” He was charming in “Clueless,” heartbreaking in “The Object of My Affection” and “The Shape of Things,” and downright hilarious in a brief cameo as John Lennon in “Walk Hard.” This movie seems to be about the big, loud, dumb, humiliating moments — an unexpected same-sex kiss in public, an embarrassing photo made public, an intimate moment made public — but Rudd is at his best in the small, perfectly timed moments when his character is trying hard to be a “regular guy,” even though in his heart he suspects that whatever it takes, it is beyond him.

Whether it’s a romance or a bromance, movies about couples almost always position them as superego and id. On one side is a responsible, mature, thoughtful person who follows the rules. On the other is someone who is impulsive, outspoken, and a lot of fun but not quite a grown-up. Generally, both discover that they are missing something and it all ends happily ever after.

The romantic couple in this movie are both pretty much in the responsible and rule-following category. In its first moments, Peter (Paul Rudd) proposes to Zooey (Rashida Jones). She accepts. And then she immediately has to share the moment with her nearest and dearest — her friends. On the way home from the proposal she puts them on speakerphone and they do everything but launch into a conference call version of “Going to the Chapel” before inadvertently revealing to Peter that Zooey has kept them privy to the most intimate (and I mean intimate — and privy) aspects of their 8-month relationship.

Peter now has everything, a wonderful fiancee and some great career prospects in real estate (if he can just sell Lou Ferrigno’s house to get the investment capital). But when he has no one to call to share the news of the engagement and he overhears Zooey worrying that he will be too dependent on her, Peter decides he has to find a male best friend. He goes on some “man-dates” but no one is right. And then he meets Sydney (Jason Seigel of “How I Met Your Mother” and “Forgetting Sarah Marshall”), whose unabashed honesty, easy acceptance of Peter’s floundering attempts at guy-talk, and endless time for hanging out make Peter feel at home. Sydney lives in a “man-cave” but he is in essence a boy, a cross between Peter Pan and Lampwick, the kid in “Pinnochio” who turned into a donkey on Pleasure Island.

The film shrewdly salutes and makes fun of the way that the progress toward friendship parallels a romantic relationship, the attraction, the tension in the initial invitations, the thrill of finding what you have in common (they both love Rush!, the sweetness of feeling completely at home with someone. Rudd is terrific as we see him trying hard to interact with Sydney, for whom male friendships come naturally. The expression on his face as he tries to match Sydney’s comfortable conversational rhythms is a gem of comic mingling of anxiety and pleasure. There is some nice understated support from Andy Samberg as Peter’s brother and J.K. Simmons (“Juno”) as his father, but the shrillness of the stereotyped hostile married couple played by Jon Favreau and Jaime Pressly is annoying. Thankfully, the rest of the movie avoids the usual terror of women usually found in man-boy comedies, but it would be nice to let the girls get a laugh once in a while, especially when they are as talented as Pressly and Jones. The script is predictable and the movie falls apart whenever Rudd is off-screen, but as soon as he returns he makes it watchable and even endearing.

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Comedy Movies -- format