Casa de Mi Padre

Posted on March 15, 2012 at 6:11 pm

You think having sunny-spirited Californian Will Ferrell play the son of a Mexican rancher is not goofy enough? How about if the entire movie is in Spanish (with subtitles)? You want goofier? I got your goofy right here. The entire premise of the movie is that it is a humorous take on a genre that is largely unknown to its intended audience. The result plays like an extended “Funny or Die” short, engagingly loopy and unpretentious but overlong and uneven.

Ferrell’s great appeal as a comic performer is the way he commits so completely to whatever his character’s dim but utterly earnest world view is supposed to be. Whether he is an elf or “Hank the Tank” or a high school cheerleader or banging on a cowbell, he is completely on board. Here he joins with Mexican stars Gabriel Garcia Bernal and Diego Luna (who co-starred in “Y Tu Mama Tambien” and “Rudo Y Cursi”), and Latino actors Genesis Rodriguez (“Man on a Ledge”) and Efren Ramirez (“Napoleon Dynamite”) in the story of a rancher with two sons, Armando (Ferrell) and Raul (Luna) and the drug kingpin (Bernal) who wants their ranch and the woman both brothers love.

Armando is a rancher at heart, but his father does not respect him, reserving his love for the son who left home and became successful in business, Raul. When Raul returns with his beautiful fiancee, Sonia (Rodriguez), they hope the ranch’s financial problems will be over. But it turns out Raul’s money comes from drugs, and the rival drug lord Onza (Bernal), who has his own relationship with Sonia, wants to eliminate the competition and punish those who dared to challenge him.

The film embraces the cheesiness of its melodramatic plot, clunky (at least in translation) dialog, and limited budget, and the best jokes are the cheery and sometimes absurd asides that go on at the edges of the frame. Thankfully, its humor is based in a genuine affection for its source material, the soapy, low-budget telenovelas (and the traditional Hollywood Westerns that influenced them), respecting the heart of those stories and their audiences. The cast is terrific, especially Bernal, who can make smoking two cigars at once look menacing and the beautiful Rodriguez, and everyone in the cast is clearly having a blast. There are some moments of loony hilarity, but it would have worked better as a short, as the concept gets played out quickly. Si casa no es tu casa.

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Jeff, Who Lives At Home

Posted on March 15, 2012 at 6:00 pm

Lowest Recommended Age:	Mature High Schooler
MPAA Rating:	Rated R for language including some sexual references and some drug use
Profanity:	Constant very strong, explicit, and crude language
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Drinking, drunk driving, and drug use
Violence/ Scariness:	Some peril and violence, no one badly hurt
Diversity Issues:	Diverse characters
Date Released to Theaters:	March 16, 2012

Of course Jeff (Jason Segal) lives at home. Just about everyone lives at home; that’s what “home” means. The thing about 30-year-old Jeff, though, is that he still lives at the home he never-quite grew up in. He lives in the basement of his mother’s home, and while he tells her he is busy when she calls from the office, he really does not do much but smoke pot and watch movies, certainly nothing by way of education or employment. We first see him dictating his thoughts on yet another re-watching of M. Knight Shyamalan’s deterministic alien invasion movie, Signs. In tight close-up, there is almost a rapturous expression on his face as he recounts the way that seemingly random events and choices turn out to be essential. That enlightened insight about interconnectedness seems to have no relationship to Jeff’s being on the toilet as he discusses it.

Jeff’s mother asks him to go to the store and get some wood glue so that he can repair a broken slat in the shutters. And it is her birthday. So like heros in epics from the earliest days of storytelling, Jeff undertakes a journey and a quest. He makes a rare excursion away from home.

Jeff may be going out for wood glue, but in his heart the quest is for meaning and connection. The wrong number asking for “Kevin” he received that morning could be a sign of some kind. And so, when Jeff sees a guy on the bus with “Kevin” on the back of his basketball shirt (Evan Ross, son of Diana Ross), he follows him off the bus instead of staying on to get to Home Depot for the glue. After some misadventure — and a pick-up game — he runs into his older brother, Pat (Ed Helms of “The Office” and “The Hangover”), who has been drowning his troubles at a Hooters after surprising his wife, Linda (Judy Greer of “The Descendents”) with a Porsche they cannot afford. Pat and Jeff get into the Porsche so they can buy the wood glue but once again a number of detours lead them astray, after they see Linda out with a man they don’t recognize. Meanwhile, their mother (an enchanting Susan Sarandon) is receiving flirtatious overtures from an anonymous admirer somewhere in her office’s nest of cubicles and finding herself flattered and intrigued and nervous.

Writer/director brother team Jay and Mark Duplass (“The Puffy Chair”) are often credited or criticized for creating the genre of “mumblecore,” a category of 21st century independent characterized by inarticulate and often aimless characters ineffectually grappling with the transition to adulthood. But it is a mistake to underestimate the strong structural foundation that underlies this film. Both Jeff and Pat are immature and inclined to numb their feelings (with pot or a Porsche). But the essential debate they (sometimes inarticulately) have about meaning and connection is nicely echoed in the seeming coincidences and randomness of their journey and the way they rediscover their own connection.

Parents should know that this film includes very strong and crude language, sexual references including adultery, drinking and drug use, and some peril and scuffles.

Family discussion: Whose life changes the most by the end of the movie? Why did Pat and Jeff respond so differently to the loss of their father?

If you like this, try: “Daytrippers” and “The Puffy Chair”

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Comedy Movies -- format

John Carter

Posted on March 8, 2012 at 6:56 pm

It takes a while to get going and is about half an hour too long, but “John Carter” has some spectacular visuals and well-staged action scenes. Edgar Rice Burroughs, the author of the Tarzan novels, also wrote the John Carter: Adventures on Mars series, about a Confederate Army veteran transported to Mars, who becomes involved in battles between two humanoid warring factions (one of which has, natch, a beautiful princess who does not want to marry the leader of the opposing side as her father is urging). There are also some warlike but intelligent tall, green, egg-laying creatures with an extra pair of arms, and some mysterious robed messenger types with access to super-weapons.

Handsome but bland Taylor Kitsch plays John Carter. In an overlong prologue, we see him as an angry loner seeking a legendary gold stash and refusing to join the U.S. Cavalry (headed by “Breaking Bad’s Bryan Cranston). He finally discovers the cave with the gold, which is a storage facility used by what we would call a Martian, and a fight ends with his being transported to Mars, or, as the inhabitants call it, Barsoom. He is discovered by some of the four-armed green Martians, including their leader Tars (voice of Willem Dafoe), who is fascinated by Carter’s ability to leap huge distances and heights, thanks to the Barsoomian gravity. He is something between a pet and a prisoner, but things improve when they give him a drink that makes it possible for them to understand each other’s languages.

In the meantime, the robed messengers have delivered their super-weapon to Sab Than (“The Wire’s” Dominic West), the leader of the Zodanga, enemies of Helium, which is led by Tardos Mors (Ciaran Hinds), father of Princes Dejah Thoris (Lynn Collins), who are now in an increasingly precarious position. It gets overly complicated for a while but then it picks up when John Carter gets involved with Dejah and has to fight some enormous monsters gladiator-style and there are some very cool flying ships.

The frame story adds unnecessary clutter to an already-muddled plot and Collins, an extraordinarily gifted and classically trained actress, is under-used in a decidedly un-classical role. There has been some surprising speculation about Christian themes in the storyline, but I believe it is just the typical finding-the-hero-within-after-disillusionment, down to the big reveal about returning home to discover tragedy that we see in everything from “The Searchers” to “Star Wars: A New Hope.” The most important reason it does not work well as a Christ story is that the main character is not very compelling and the narrative not very resonant.

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Being Flynn

Posted on March 8, 2012 at 6:05 pm

Lowest Recommended Age:	Mature High Schooler
MPAA Rating:	Rated R for adult situations, language, nudity, and sex
Profanity:	Constant very strong and explicit language
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Drinking, smoking, drugs, substance abuse
Diversity Issues:	A theme of the movie, character makes bigoted remarks
Date Released to Theaters:	March 9, 2012
Amazon.com ASIN:	B00772HR6O

Nick Flynn was working at a Boston homeless shelter when his father, Jonathan Flynn, came in looking for a place to stay. Nick was raised by his mother and had little contact with his father except for some letters explaining that he would soon be recognized as one of the three greatest writers in American history. Nick Flynn’s memoir, Another Bullshit Night in Suck City, has been adapted for the screen by director Paul Weitz, whose films often explore the relationships between fathers and sons (“About a Boy,” “In Good Company,” “American Pie”).

Paul Dano plays Nick, a young man who has some good instincts and some talent. He is worse than directionless — he is stuck. His mother (Julianne Moore) has died and he has no place to go. He moves into a strip club-turned apartment that is barely more than a squat, selected over the other candidates because he has no family who might come in for an extended stay. He takes the job at the homeless shelter because it is the first opportunity he hears of. He is not unsympathetic but he is distant and untrained. When a resident needs a new pair of pants Nick turns to one of the more experienced aides to ask what size. The aide says simply, “Ask him.” Nick begins to see — as we do — the artificiality of the denial-based distance we maintain from people we think might ask more from us than we can give or might make us think about how fragile our support system can be. When his father (Robert De Niro) shows up in the line of people needing a bed, Nick has so many conflicting feelings he has to go numb — on his own and with some chemical assistance. He wants to love his father and he wants his father to love him. He wants to care for him but is afraid of not being able to — we learn more about why later in the story. He is not prepared to acknowledge how much he wants to be like his father (in following his dream of being a writer) and does not want to be like him (unable to finish his story). We hear their competing versions of the story but we know, as Nick does, that both are coming from him.

De Niro has one of his best roles as a man wavering between fierce pride and grandiosity. Jonathan is a man of large gestures and unspeakably selfish behavior. De Niro keeps him human without compromising by trying to make him more sympathetic. Ultimately, it is Jonathan’s lack of empathy that allows him to finally if briefly provide fatherly support and guidance in telling Nick an important truth that frees him from the past and provides direction for the future.

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Salmon Fishing in the Yemen

Posted on March 8, 2012 at 6:02 pm

Paul Torday’s satiric novel of politics, money, love, and fishing has been brought to the screen with Ewan McGregor as a government fisheries expert and Emily Blunt as an aide to a Yemeni sheik who has what seems to be an impossible dream — building a salmon fishery in his desert country.

When Dr. Alfred Jones (McGregor) receives a polite letter from Harriet Chetwode-Talbot (Blunt) about the sheik’s proposal, he dismisses it as ridiculous and sends back a curt refusal: “Conditions in the Yemen make this project fundamentally infeasible.” But bad news about conflict in the Mid-East has the Prime Minister’s press secretary looking for “a good news story from the Middle East — a big one,” and British-Yemeni cooperation on something as benign as fly-fishing seems like just the photo-op-friendly project to distract the public. Dr. Jones is directed to meet with Ms. Chetwode-Talbot (as they will continue to address one another). It turns out that some elements of the “fundamental in-feasibility” of the project are not as infeasible as he thought. For one thing, money is no object, and it is remarkable how many obstacles that clears. And the support of the Prime Minister clears away most of the rest. It’s like a benign “Charlie Wilson’s War” with fish instead of anti-aircraft weapons).

Dr. Jones makes up the most impossibly high figure he can think of, and that immediately becomes the budget for the project. Suddenly, Dr. Jones has access to the most expert engineers in the world, including dam builders from China and to the equipment that can ship millions of fish thousands of miles. Both he and Ms. Chetwode-Talbot discover the liberating feeling of imagining endless possibilities. But there are complications and dangers that come from that much freedom. There are challenges that are beyond the capacity of even the most skilled engineers. Ms. Chetwode-Talbot has a boyfriend in the military who is fighting in the Mid-East and Dr. Jones has a wife who is on an extended business trip to Geneva. Those commitments begin to seem like just another barrier once thought impenetrable, but now open to reconsideration.

Director Lasse Hellström dissolves some barriers of his own, deftly bridging genres with a story that combines political satire with adventure and romance and is not afraid to take on issues like faith and bridging cultural boundaries. Amr Waked brings dignity and charisma to the role of the sheik. “I have too many wives not to know when a woman is unhappy,” he tells Ms. Chetwode-Talbot. He persuades Dr. Jones that what he wants is not a rich man’s whim but a part of a larger vision to inspire his countrymen and for the moment at least the idea sounds less absurd to us as well. Kirsten Scott Thomas steals the show as the press secretary, whether she is sending tart IMs or scooting her children out the door as she barks orders into her cell phone. The film effectively captures the ruthless pragmatism and frequent cynicism of political trade-offs.

It captures the broadening horizons of the two Brits transplanted to the desert as well. As McGregor and Blunt root for fish “bred for the dinner table” to locate the instinct to swim upstream, we root for them to do the same.

Parents should know that this film includes strong material for a PG-13 including sexual references and a brief explicit situation, brief strong language, and wartime and sabotage violence.

Family discussion: What does Dr. Jones discover about faith? How does the project make him think differently about his own options? What do you think will happen next?

If you like this, try: “Chocolat” and “Local Hero” and the novel by Paul Torday

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