Film101

Friday, July 31, 2009

Apatow Re-re-re-re-re-re-re-redux

Judd Apatow is back...yet again. "Funny People" is his eighth film in a year and a half. My review of it is here: http://boomerlifemagazine.com/ver2/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=287:funny-people&catid74:movie-reviews

Tuesday, July 28, 2009

I hate you, "I Love You, Beth Cooper"

“I Love You, Beth Cooper” may be the funniest book I have ever read.

The movie? Not so much.

The author, Larry Doyle, also wrote the screenplay. So that isn’t the problem.

It’s amazing how important to a movie good acting and direction are.

Physical comedy is hard -- much harder than it looks. At best, it requires a sublimely talented athlete, someone who uses grace and strength to represent an absence of grace and strength -- I’m thinking a Chaplin here, or a Keaton. Peter Sellers could do it, too.

But simply running around frantically and making funny noises does not constitute physical comedy, especially when (it needn’t be said) the funny noises aren’t funny. And in “I Love You, Beth Cooper,” it isn’t just that the actors are not capable of performing the comedy, it is also that the director hasn’t got a funny bone in his body.

Not even his funny bone is a funny bone.

The director is Chris Columbus, whose last funny movie was “Mrs. Doubtfire,” which came out in 1993 -- sixteen years ago. And that was only funny because he could turn the camera on Robin Williams in drag and let him go to town. Whatever he knew about comedy he has forgotten, and especially what he knew about comic pacing. Any comedian will tell you that pacing -- timing -- is the most important element in comedy.

In “I Love You, Beth Cooper,” the pacing is off; the jokes are too slow, but performed too frantically. And in Columbus’ leaden hands, every joke is emphasized about a half-step too much.

The story itself has potential (and, as mentioned, it makes a hilarious book). Nerd high school valedictorian Dennis makes the worst valedictory speech ever, using the platform to proclaim his love for the head cheerleader Beth, who barely knows he exists. This speech sets off what is supposed to be a wild night in which Dennis and his best friend Rich, along with Beth and her two best friends, go on a riotous spree of rowdy fun.

If only it worked that way on the screen.

The exceptionally miscast Paul Rust plays Dennis, and he tries so hard to make the character seem sympathetic that he only comes off as annoying. The object of his dreams, Beth, is played by the exceptionally miscast Hayden Panettiere, who is on the TV show “Heroes” and is definitely not ready for the big screen. As lightweight an actress as she is, she is even less successful as a comedienne.

The best friend, Rich, is played by Jack T. Carpenter. He makes Rust and Panettiere seem like the Marx Brothers in comparison.

The book is great, but as a movie, “I Love You, Beth Cooper” should have had its plug pulled. If you can’t get good actors and you can’t get a good director, don’t make the movie.

Monday, July 27, 2009

Not great, but good enough

Critics are calling “The Hurt Locker” the most intense, best movie to come out of the war in Iraq. Some are calling it the best movie of the year. And they’re right.

Up to a point.

That nagging feeling you get while watching the film that something is missing eventually coalesces into an unmistakable truth: This movie has no story.

It’s strictly an episodic film; soldiers go out on a bunch of dangerous missions and we never know whether some or all of them will not return.

On the fighters’ level, war may very well be exactly like that. So “The Hurt Locker” brilliantly portrays the experience of war from the point of view of the men fighting one.

But that doesn’t make for a dramatic movie.

The extraordinary tension, which is built up so magnificently well, starts to dissipate like air out of a tire. There is no sense of progress. The narrative does not move toward anything other than the day the unit’s tour of duty is over. And that is why the climax and conclusion feel like such letdowns -- the plot does not necessarily move toward them, they just happen.

Still not convinced? Consider this: Two main characters have an important conversation at the end that is supposed to sum up their feelings about what they do. But they same conversation could have been held at the beginning of the movie or at any point in between. It explains or reveals nothing.

This is not to diminish the riveting work of director Kathryn Bigelow and writer Mark Boal. They have created a movie that succinctly re-creates the life-or-death intensity of war. They just don’t know what to do with it.

Jeremy Renner stars as Sgt. Bill James, an expert in disarming bombs. At one point he admits to having disarmed 873 bombs, a figure that impresses a colonel, who admiringly calls him a “wild man” (colonels do not come off well in this picture).

James is a wild man, true, and a maverick. But his go-it-alone antics worry Sgt. Sanborn (Anthony Mackie), who knows that a bomb squad needs to work together as a well-coordinated team if its members are going to survive, especially in a hostile land.

And in this film, Baghdad (played by Jordan) is a hostile land. What the filmmakers do best is to communicate the suspenseful insecurity felt by the soldiers when they see Iraqi residents. They don’t know who is on their side, who is just watching and who may be hiding a cell phone, ready to detonate a bomb.

Bigelow shoots the entire picture with hand-held cameras, which certainly increase the audience’s anxiety. Hand-held cameras have become a cliché over the last few years, but Bigelow’s use of them rivals the work of Paul Greengrass of “The Bourne Ultimatum,” the undisputed master of the hand-held camera.

The difference is that Greengrass knows the importance of a story. Bigelow and Boal have forgotten.

Thursday, July 23, 2009

"(500) Days of Summer" -- Twisting the night away

“(500) Days of Summer” tries to answer a lot of questions about the nature of love and even about fate, but the most pertinent question is this: Is the female lead in a romantic comedy worthy of pursuit, even though she shows no discernible personality, just because she is played by Zooey Deschanel?

The answer turns out to be yes.

Deschanel stars as Summer, the sometimes obscure object of desire in this low-key but pleasant romantic comedy with a few twists. It is the twists, by and large, that make it so pleasant.

The film tells the story of the 500-day (give or take) relationship between Summer and Tom, played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt.

It’s Tom’s film all the way, told entirely from his perspective. He’s the one we come to know (Summer is a character almost entirely without a backstory), he’s the one looking for our sympathy and understanding. Summer is just the (almost overly) typical Zooey Deschanel character -- quirky, a bit aloof, but ubercute.

Although there is a general progression from the first meeting to the break-up -- we know from the start that they have broken up -- the story is told non-linearly. That is the most mundane of the twists; the others are usually more effective and interesting. First-time director Marc Webb does not hesitate to pull out every idea he has, no doubt, been saving up since film school.

Perhaps the most notable of these is a split screen during a party scene in which Tom’s expectations of what will happen are shown on one side, and what really happens on the other. Almost as good is a fantasy dance sequence that suddenly breaks out when Tom is happy. It is not the sequence itself that is so intriguing (it’s been done before, a lot), but the subtle way Webb connects the sequence to the reason for its being. Tom is happy because of Summer, who, though it is never mentioned, always wears blue. In the dance sequence, everyone dancing also wears blue.

Film geeks will also appreciate the parodies of “The Red Balloon,” “Persona” and “The Seventh Seal” that Tom goes to see when he is unhappy. A title card showing which day of the 500 we are on is also nice, because a tree in the corner changes its foliage depending on the mood of the scene. The overused trick of filming the characters as if they were in a documentary, however, is less successful.

It’s a good thing the twists are included, because the film’s flaws would otherwise be more noticeable. Writers Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber have their share of sitcom moments, from Tom’s precocious younger sister dispensing sage advice to his two standard-issue friends: one wacky, the other a humorous loser. Summer, in the meantime, does not appear to have any friends at all.

Gordon-Levitt, just a teen on “Third Rock from the Sun,” has matured into a fine actor. Here he plays a awkward and likable guy, trying his best to navigate the treacherous shoals of love. Deschanel just plays Deschanel.

Her last few films have been misfires, but in this case, that’s enough.