Horrible Bosses

Posted on July 7, 2011 at 6:05 pm

Three old friends who work for deranged, abusive bosses decide that the only solution is a “Strangers on a Train”-style murder swap in a lightweight comedy sustained by recession-era resentment fantasies, some attention to plot structure, and a bunch of top comic performers enjoying themselves so much it is impossible not to join them. As confirmed by the outtakes over the closing credits, even the stars were shocked into laughter by some of the more outrageous moments in the film. This is what “Bad Teacher” wanted to be, cheerfully offensive with some forward propulsion. It’s a wish fulfillment story with the vicarious pleasure of revenge and of seeing other people get into a lot of trouble for taking the risks we are much too careful to attempt.

You can see that Jennifer Aniston, looking like an inhumanly idealized CGI version of herself, is so happy to be out of those cloying rom-coms that she has a total blast as a predatory and sexually voracious dentist who only gets more excited by humiliating her assistant (Charlie Day as Dale). Even her dentist music plays “Crazy.” Colin Farrell, unrecognizable as a paunchy cokehead with a hangover, clearly enjoys playing a nunchucking nutball whose primary influence on home decoration appears to Uday Hussein. And Kevin Spacey, who pretty much owns the bad boss role brings it once again as a paranoid, manipulative bully.

No wonder Kurt (Jason Sudeikis), Nick (Jason Bateman), and Dale feel trapped. None of them can find another job. Horrible bosses don’t hesitate to threaten bad references and the job market is awful. A high school classmate who was once a successful financier at Lehman Brothers is now reduced to, well, let’s just say he has his hand out. So, being the dim-witted play by the rules guys that they are, with their only knowledge of crime coming from Dale’s intensive study of the “Law & Order” franchise, they try to find an assassin to knock off the horrible bosses, reasoning that “We don’t clean our apartments or cut our hair,” so why should they do their own killing? They look for help first on the internet (and wonder whether they should have a cheese plate to offer the hired killer) and then try some random guy because he is black and has a scary nickname and lot of tattoos and therefore must be a badass (Jamie Foxx, very funny as Jones).

Unlike “Bad Teacher,” this film recognizes that the outrageous and shocking behavior works only if there is a solidly structured plot to keep things moving. It is as funny to see how some of the elements from the first half come back in the second as it is to see Aniston’s sexual predator, spraying Day’s crotch with the hose from the spit sink and singing out, “Shabbat Shalom!” at what is revealed. Bateman’s impeccably dry delivery is perfectly balanced with Sukeikis’ guy-next door (if the guy next door was constantly looking for short-term female companionship) cheer, and a nice restorative after the awful “Hall Pass.” Julie Bowen (“Modern Family”), Lindsay Sloane, and Ioan Gruffudd make the most of brief appearances and good spirits about bad activities keeps things brisk and lively. It is most likely to be remembered in the future as a relic of (we hope) a low point in the American economy than anyone’s notion of a classic, but fans of raunchy comedy will find something to enjoy.
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Comedy Crime

Zookeeper

Posted on July 7, 2011 at 6:00 pm

Lowest Recommended Age:	Middle School
MPAA Rating:	Rated PG for some rude and suggestive humor and language
Profanity:	Fake swearing ("frickin'") and some crude potty language
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Social drinking
Violence/ Scariness:	Comic peril and violence, reference to abuse of animals
Diversity Issues:	Diverse characters
Date Released to Theaters:	July 9, 2011
Date Released to DVD:	October 11, 2011

This is a movie about how Kevin James can do so much better, but Kevin James can do so much better than this movie. In the film, he tries to change his life to be worthy of a woman he thinks he loves. In the audience, we want him to stop making movies about what a shlub he is.

James and a team including some of his “King of Queens” writers have produced a dull and oddly mean-spirited movie about a zookeeper who takes advice about dating (or, as the animals call it, “mating”) from the talking animals at his zoo.

The woman he likes is a fashion designer named Stephanie (the game and able Leslie Bibb), who dumps him in the first five minutes of the film after a proposal. Still heartbroken five years later, Griffin (James) sees her again. At first, he resists her indications of interest but then, just as he begins to respond, another old boyfriend enters the picture (Joe Rogan as Gale). The animals decide to reveal their secret power of speech so they can give Griffin some guidance on how to get Stephanie back. As you can imagine (and as perhaps you would rather not), the animals have their own ideas about how to attract the opposite gender. Since, except for the bickering lions (voices of Sylvester Stallone and Cher!), none of them appear to have significant others of any species, their advice is of questionable value. Nevertheless, this gives us an opportunity to see James walking like a bear and marking his territory like a wolf. Thankfully, he does not follow the monkey’s direction about what to throw.

But there isn’t much more to be thankful for. Adam Sandler (who provides the voice of the monkey) produced, which means it’s yet another slacker no-effort film, with another soundtrack filled with 80’s songs not to make any point or for any particular purpose but just because that’s the last time Sandler listened to the radio. And despite its superficial endorsement of being yourself and doing what you love, that over-done message is eclipsed by a weird turn in the third act. Griffin takes advice from the animals that seems to have been stolen from Mystery the Pickup Artist. They tell him to keep Stephanie off-balance by alternating insults and affection to make her insecure — and it works, not just on her but on others as well. There is a cliched race-t0-the-airport scene which makes no sense in an era of cell phones, but it does show us what and who is important to Griffin — until a pointless and distracting detour just so he can hit someone along the way that undermines that message as well. Griffin does some things he is not proud of but makes no attempt to fix his mistakes. The film seems to suggest that it is all right, even a sign of strength and confidence to hurt someone’s feelings.

The PG rating should not be a signal that this is a kids’ movie. Children will not be very interested in Griffin’s romantic adventures or the night out on the town he gives to the zoo’s melancholy gorilla (“Send some fried zucchini to that table of secretaries,” he tells the waitress). It’s downright smarmy, with the use of fake swear words like “frickin'” to keep the MPAA ratings board at bay. Poor Ken Jeong for the second week in a row is stuck in a humiliatingly shrill, borderline racist caricature as a snake specialist and Donnie Wahlberg is wasted as an animal-abusing zoo staffer.

James is a talented and appealing performer and even this mess can’t hide the radiant beauty and class of Rosario Dawson as a warm-hearted zoo vet. There are a few nice moments when Dawson sails across a dance floor on acrobat’s streamers and a few it-could-have-been-worse moments when it turns out that Griffin is not the usual comedy movie incompetent. He has a nice relationship with his brother and is good at what he does. But James and Dawson could be so much better doing something else.

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Monte Carlo

Posted on June 30, 2011 at 6:10 pm

Lowest Recommended Age:	4th - 6th Grades
MPAA Rating:	Rated PG for brief mild language
Profanity:	Brief mild language ("hoochie," etc.)
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Social drinking
Violence/ Scariness:	Some comic peril
Diversity Issues:	None
Date Released to Theaters:	July 1, 2011

It’s the Princess and the Pauper with Disney star Selena Gomez and two Gossip Girls in a story about a Texas waitress who takes the place of a selfish heiress in the glamorous title city. There’s also a touch of Cinderella (though the fairy godmother is unwitting). And it is filled with flouncy pretty dresses and bouncy pop songs to delight tween Disney channel fangirls.

Gomez plays Grace, a high school senior in Texas. She and her best friend Emma (Katie Cassidy) have been saving the tips from their waitress jobs and finally have enough to go to Paris. At the last minute, her mother and her new step-father insist that her step-sister Meg (Leighton Meester) go along. Grace and Meg have a strained relationship that quickly gets much more strained once they arrive. The hotel is dingy and cramped and the tour is brusque and rushed.

The girls are enjoying the top of the Eiffel Tower when they miss the tour bus and get caught in a downpour. When they duck into a luxury hotel for shelter, Grace is mistaken for a spoiled British heiress named Cordelia Winthrop Scott (also Gomez, clearly having much more fun as the imperious young woman with an accent like a “mean Mary Poppins”). Cordelia is supposed to be on her way to Monte Carlo for a fund-raiser to repair her reputation as a party girl. The girls overhear her telling a friend she will leave the hotel without checking out and decide Grace should take her place for one night, rationalizing that the room is already paid for. But one thing leads to another and soon the girls are in Monte Carlo, selecting designer clothes from Cordelia’s luggage so they can go to the ball and meeting charming princes. Well, one is a prince and two are charming.

There’s also a zillion-dollar diamond and sapphire necklace that is not always where it is supposed to be. And it turns out that Cordelia is scheduled to play polo.

“I like the way they come down the stairs,” sighed the 9-year old girl sitting next to me. It doesn’t take much more to enchant the target audience than seeing the girls in their party dresses coming down the steps in slow motion on the way to the ball. But this movie, thankfully gives us a little bit more. The girls each have enough of a personality and story to keep it from getting too silly but not enough to keep it from being a fairy tale, at least the kind that will make dreams come true for some tweens who are too often neglected by the people who make movies.

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Comedy Movies -- format Romance

Larry Crowne

Posted on June 30, 2011 at 6:00 pm

“Larry Crowne” is such a perfectly pleasant movie that it may not be until you walk toward the exit that you realize that something is missing. Until then, the good spirits of stars Tom Hanks and Julia Roberts, clearly enjoying themselves and each other as they beam their considerable star power our way keep us feeling if not entertained at least appreciated. Hanks, directing for the first time since his debut with the terrific “That Thing You Do” is immensely hospitable. He all but hands out milk and cookies to make the audience feel welcome, with a series of recession-era but sweetly comic scenes and quirky but endearing characters and a can’t miss theme of a man literally and metaphorically casting off the elements of his past that are holding him back and discovering that he is capable of taking on new challenges and new relationships.

But Hanks the star and director has a problem with Hanks the co-screenwriter (along with “My Big Fat Greek Wedding’s” Nia Vardelos). Something is missing from the story.

Of course we fall in love with Larry Crowne (Hanks) right from the opening credits. The very first thing we see him do is pick up trash in the parking lot on the way to his job at a big, WalMart-style store. Then in a quick montage we see that he always does more than expected and genuinely enjoys his job. He is ever-cheerful with colleagues and helpful with customers, and an eight-time winner of the “Employee of the Month” award. And then he gets fired. Our first clue that something is not right with the story is the over-the-top awfulness of the termination, but we let that pass because we want to see what he will do.

Larry is downsized because he does not have a college degree. He joined the Navy after high school, got out after 20 years as a culinary specialist (cook), and has been working at the store ever since. He is in a financial pinch because he bought out his ex-wife’s share of their home, which is now worth much less than its mortgage. A perky blonde bank representative (Hanks’ real-life wife, Rita Wilson) keeps offering him complimentary coffee as she gives him the bad news. Larry can’t find a new job and realizes he needs to go to college. He sells his gas guzzler and trades his flat-screen TV for a scooter.

Mercedes (Julia Roberts) is a teacher at the community college whose greatest hope is that fewer than 10 students will register for her classes so she can cancel. She feels very far from what she once aspired to, supporting a husband (“Breaking Bad’s” Bryan Cranston) whose own aspirations have shrunk from novelist to comment on a blog. She once hoped to teach Shakespeare and Shaw. Now she teaches students who cannot even remember how to pronounce her name how to get up in front of the class and say something.

So we know where this is going, and we want it to go there, and the ingredients are all assembled. The situation is timely and engaging. The cast is exceptional. Larry has adorable neighbors (Cedric the Entertainer and Taraji P. Henson), and adorable classmates: the ravishingly lovely Gugu Mbatha-Raw as the girl who gives Crowne a literally top-to-bottom makeover and introduces him to her scooter-riding gang, Grace Gummer (Meryl Streep’s daughter) as a lacrosse-player more comfortable on the field than in the classroom, “Night at the Museum’s” Rami Malek, sweet but a little dim. George Takei is marvelous as a professor of economics. Mercedes has a sympathetic colleague (the always-welcome Pam Grier).

But something is missing. All of Roberts’ movie star magic can’t make the character of Mercedes as appealing as she needs to be. We never get a sense of how she got to the slough of despond she is in and the character is so inconsistent she seems blurry. All of Roberts’ usual tricks, the dazzling smile, the laugh, the walk, can’t disguise the fact that while she tells her students what she is teaching them is to care, it is not clear to her or to them or to us that she has learned that lesson herself. There is no moment of change or connection or even notice to make us feel that there is a genuine basis for a relationship, and the ending is hurried and superficial. There is build-up without pay-off. I enjoyed spending time with these characters. I wish they were in a better movie.

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Comedy Date movie Drama Romance

Transformers: Dark of the Moon

Posted on June 28, 2011 at 10:19 pm

I feel like Goldilocks. It’s not as good as the first one, but it’s not as awful as the second one. So, if that doesn’t make it just right, at least it makes it better than the second one and with some summer movie chases, fights, and explosions that make it popcorn-worthy.

It begins with a prologue that cheekily re-imagines the space race of the 1960’s as a secret mission to learn more about a mysterious rocket that crashed on the dark side of the moon in the late 1950’s. Archival footage of Presidents Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon, and newsman Walter Cronkite is used to make it appear that in the brief moments our first moon landing was not visible from earth, the astronauts were exploring a cavernous machine. Even the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear accident is tied into cold war-ear secrets about what was found on the moon.

Then, we are in present day where Sam (Shia LeBeouf) returns as Sam Witwicky. Still in high school in the first movie, he is now out of college and looking for a job in Washington D.C. It’s tough these days, especially when you’re not allowed to put “saved the world — twice” on your resume for reasons of national security. Sam also has a new girlfriend named Carly (model Rosie Huntington-Whiteley). The departure of Megan Fox is explained in a few short lines. No one seems to miss her.

Sam meets Carly’s boss Dylan (Patrick Dempsey), a fabulously wealthy but very arrogant businessman (think Dr. McSleazy) and tries not to be jealous, even after Dylan gives Carly a $200,000 Mercedes. But, you know, blah blah and the bad robot decepticons are back, blah blah the head of National Security (Frances McDormand) tries to keep Sam away from his friends the autobots, and blah blah all something will do something if Sam doesn’t get that tractor beam out of commission, I mean knock out that pillar that has “the ability to reshape the universe” and build a bridge to another world (didn’t we just see that in “Thor?).

And then the humans fight each other and the robots and the robots fight each other and the humans. In 3D. Various characters turn out to be not what we thought. There are surprise guest cameos. And at two and a half hours it goes on much too long (believe me, they could have lost an hour and had a nice, brisk evening at the movies). McDormand, Ken Jeong (stuck with an embarrassing attempt at homophobic humor, literally with his pants down), and John Malcovich are completely wasted. Huntington-Whiteley is better at posing than acting — but she’s got legs and knows how to use them. And we once again do not get enough of John Duhamel. John Turturro wore out his welcome well before the first one ended but Alan Tudyk makes the role of his aide into something enjoyably off-kilter. It’s too loud, it’s too long, some of the battles are hard to follow, the action is entertaining and so is the but relief that it isn’t as awful as the last one.

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