Craiger’s Cinema Corner

****  out of  ****

If you want to see an impeccably modulated and masterfully underplayed performance, then look no further than George Clooney in the wonderfully crafted new legal thriller, MICHAEL CLAYTON.

In the film Clooney erodes away all of that cocky and suave bravado that he exhibited playing Danny Ocean in the OCEAN’S TRILOGY - which he also did with amazing tact and skill - and instead settles into a flawed, layered, and more world-weary soul that seems to perpetually walk in and out of a decent zone of morality and ethics.  His portrayal of the title character in CLAYTON demonstrates how charismatic and authoritative Clooney can be when he does so little: A small glance, a twist of the head, a modest movement.  What he does here is deceptively difficult - he crafts a powerful and vigorous persona without engaging in any wild grandstanding and shameless camera mugging.  It’s a pitch perfect example of a less is more approach.

Clooney has given great performances in the past (like the Oscar winning one he gave in SYRIANA from 2005), but he is at his qualified best here playing a lawyer that is unlike all other portrayals of lawyers that I have seen.  He is not a litigator, nor does he work behind a desk as a paper pusher.  He’s the guy that works in the shadows, doing jobs for the firm that would usually be the vocation of hired goons or cigar chewing P.I..  He ostensibly exists at his prestigious New York law firm as a “fixer”, or as he refers to himself at one point, a janitor.  He takes care of problems and cleans up messes, the kind that usually don’t gain the type of respect that they deserve.  Best of all - and like all people that work under less than prestigious occupations - Clayton is a staunch pragmatist.  He’s not afraid to tell someone to their face when they’re wrong or completely delusional.  His job does not have time for nonsense.  He’s a time and details man and looks for the most convenient and logical solution to a problem, even when it is not desirable choice for those involved.

MICHAEL CLAYTON works so assuredly and confidently not only because of Clooney’s smoothly intricate and secure performance, but also on a screenplay and direction level.  This films marks the incredible directorial debut of Tony Gilroy, and if his work here is any indication, he has a fine filmmaking career ahead of him.  He has already cut his teeth in Hollywood in the screenwriting arena, carving out scripts for such films as EXTREME MEASURES, PROOF OF LIFE, THE DEVIL’S ADVOCATE, and most recently and successfully, the entire JASON BOURNE trilogy.  What he does so fluently in MICHAEL CLAYTON is to craft a neo-1970’s political thriller right down to all of the subtle and discrete details: The conflicted characters, the sense of underlining dread and pathos that afflicts them, the ethical uncertainty that permeates the world, and a level of paranoia and moral ambivalence.

What’s brilliant here is that Gilroy does not allow himself to get bogged down in false sentiment, warmed over characters, and would-be shocking twists in the already labyrinthian plot.  Instead, he allows this thriller to simmer and slowly build, element by element, until we see the grand arc of everything.  He uses a framing device (the story starts somewhat at the end, then flashes back to the beginning, until it arrives once again at the point where the film began at), but it never feels like a cheat.  What this allows for is for audience involvement.  When a thriller is as dense and thick as this one, impatient and petulant viewers need not apply.  I love the fact the Gilroy never races towards an anti-climatic ending, nor does he rush the proceedings to a conclusion.  The end result is so smooth, calculated, and ingeniously engineered.

Michael Clayton (Clooney) works as a self-proclaimed “janitor” and fix-it-man for Kenner, Bach, and Leden, one of the most esteemed law firms in Manhattan.  He’s the guy the can make the impossible possible and the hard to find easily located.  Although he professionally is a lawyer on paper, he really is a cleaner and oftentimes finds himself knee deep in problems that the suits back at the firm can’t handle.  The irony of Clayton is that he is incredibly versatile and gifted - not to mention well paid - at what he does, but deep down he resents his work.  The firm sort of carries a foreboding aura of working for the mob and Michael wants out as fast as he can.

The problem is that he can’t.  His boss, Marty Bach (played wonderfully by Sydney Pollack, who has the market cornered for playing affluent, high ranking employers that exude chilling and soft spoken toughness), sure can’t understand why Michael wants out.  After all, he is talented at what he does, is a highly valuable and rare commodity at the firm, and his very respectably compensated.  In Michael’s mind, matters are quite dire.  He may look like a million bucks and seems like a cool customer, but he really is a shrill and vulnerable man.  He is a chronic gambler and lost 75 grand off of a failed business opportunity, and if he does not cough up the dough to those that want it soon, some harm may befall him.  He has sold just about everything he has in an effort to repay his debt; he even went as far to get rid of his wall fixtures at home.  He does has a nice car, but it’s a lease.

He does find some solace in his son, but his relationship with him is semi-estranged (the child lives with his ex-wife) and he does have a few friends and acquaintances.  One of them is friend and fellow fixer, Arthur (Tom Wilkinson, in a performance that beacons for Oscar consideration), but he has gone utterly loony.  How crazy?  Try stripping butt naked during a deposition in Milwaukee and then running into the streets into the freezing snow with nothing on but his socks crazy.

Okay, this guy’s a nut job and serious liability to Bach and company, but he has a secret that could cost both the law firm and another company billions.  It seems that he has some valuable information on a gigantic class action lawsuit against one of Kenner, Bach, and Leden’s biggest clients, U/North.  U/North has been willfully holding back information and scientific findings about their product and, as a result, this has lead to the deadly poisoning of people.  But whack-job Arthur wants to blow this leak sky high, which would cost U/North a fortune, not to mention that his firm would loose billions in legal fees.  This possibility really upsets U/North head corporate lawyer Karen Crowder (Tilda Swinton, who is searing and quietly ruthless here, rounding off CLAYTON’S universally strong quartet of performances), who wants to take immediate steps to stop Arthur.  Meanwhile, Marty gives Michael and ultimatum: clean up this whole mess and contain Marty, or he will be a heap of trouble.

I think that one film critic once stated that only bad films are depressing.  I thought about that while watching MICHAEL CLAYTON, which is a great depressing film.  Sometimes, I find impressively mounted works uplifting as film going experiences even if they are permeated with desolation, uncertainty, and social ambivalence.  What’s truly great about the film is that it never takes the easy way out.  The central arc of MICHAEL CLAYTON is that of unease and desperation, both on a story and character level.  From a narrative perspective, the story has neither bad or good guys, but people that walk that hard to define grey area.  U/North is clearly guilty as charged for poisoning people, and Clayton’s firm and bosses and amoral SOB’s in the way that they defend obviously guilty parties to avoid a bad financial windfall.  Like the best dramas of the 70’s, CLAYTON is about that divergence between right and wrong, and in the end we still are unsure who really won and who lost.

Then there are the characters, all of whom reveal different levels of despondency.  There’s Arthur, who despite his lunacy, strives to make U/North pay for their mistakes.  Then there is Arthur’s bosses who also desperately try to contain Arthur from spilling the beans.  Karen Crowder goes through an emotional tailspin making frantic and life altering decisions about what she feels is the “appropriate course of action” to muzzle Arthur.  And finally there is Clayton himself, who desperately goes through the biggest crisis of conscience throughout the film.  Does he obey his bosses, keep tabs on Arthur so he does not leak information that could cost his employers billions, and in turn make enough money for his services to pay his debts or does he do the right thing, disobey his bosses, and help Arthur reveal to the world what U/North is really doing?  Let’s just say that Clayton never really settles on either choice, but he nevertheless is amazingly able to meet the needs of both options.

MICHAEL CLAYTON creates a tense of harshly honest portrait of gritty urban decay where its moral complexity with its characters, themes, and story are its chief assets.  The film is low key in how it how it ripens and develops its story slowly and patiently, but it’s endlessly provocative and compelling for how it shows how one lonely and conflicted man has his entire existence unravel right before him.  It rightfully shows the stark reality of people who willfully defend the indefensible, even when logical and right head impulses burn away at them.  This is one of the best portraits of corporate malfeasance and legal wrongdoing in a long time.  It shows that all the Hollywood trickery at one’s disposal can never substitute for engrossing writing, sure-fire and level headed direction, and a series of powerful and nuanced performances.  MICHAEL CLAYTON is one of 2007’s very best films and is an uncommonly intelligent thriller during an age where far too much pyrotechnics, gore and carnage are employed for cheap shock value.

www.craigerscinemacorner.com

***  out of  ****

James Gray’s new police thriller, WE OWN THE NIGHT, represents one of the most difficult of films to critique considering its elements, some of which work marvelously, some of which fall flat.  This film occupies that always awkward middle ground between being a really absorbing and invigorating story filled with gritty and edgy characters and great performances and one that feels almost too self-consciously derivative and predictable.  I found myself questioning the logic of the movie a lot, and even more times I found myself checking my watch.

WE OWN THE NIGHT charters territory that many other films, particularly those of Martin Scorsese, have already dived into, and to much better effect.  Yet, the film sort of overcomes its own deficiencies by being a decent character drama.  It may be a formulaic and pedestrian film about mobsters and the police that want to take them down, but the real heart of the film is its family dynamic between a man, his father, and his semi-estranged son.

The semi-estranged son in question is Bobby Green, played in yet another thoroughly strong and forcefully commanding performance by Joaquin Phoenix.  He is a swinger and a hedonistic and drug addicted manager of a thriving nightclub in Brooklyn.  His nights are an endless cycle of booze, drugs, and partying.  His amoral lifestyle is one all night party of meet and greets and he is undeniably good at what he does.  He, like every other nightclub owner, has a babe of a girlfriend, in this case named Amada (Eva Mendes, always physically fetching, but the not an always dependably gifted thespian).  The nice angle here is that she truly loves Bobby, not his money, status, or the power he exudes.  Bobby, in turn, reciprocates love back to Amada.  In short: Life is good for him.

However, Bobby is not seen as a model citizen to his father and brother, who both work for the law.  Bobby alienates his family primarily from his pleasure seeking and risky lifestyle, but even more so because he does not use his father’s last name.  Green is Bobby’s dead mother’s maiden name, and this has never sat well with dear old dad, Burt Grusinsky (Robert Duvall, escalating a somewhat bit part to levels only he can muster).  Burt is actually the district police chief, so this makes his relationship especially dicey with Bobby.

Bobby’s brother does not appreciate his choice of lifestyle either.  Brother Joseph (played by Mark Wahlberg, who seems to be playing a less volatile and acid tongued version of his cop from THE DEPARTED here) is a high ranking cop within dad’s precinct and has made it his personal mission to ensure that drug trafficking is eradicated.  A new wave of narcotics has swept New York and the police’s attempts to thwart it have been largely unsuccessful.  The title of the film is actually quite apt, seeing as it was also the slogan for the NYPD of the 1980’s to gain a metaphorical strangle hold of the drug trade that had engulfed the streets.  Joseph and his father are posters boys for this new enforcement regime that hopes to tackle this ever escalating dilemma.

The real problem could be Bobby himself.  He has always tried to ensure that his real relationship with his police family is kept a secret.  Why?  Maybe it has something to do with the fact that his nightclub has some ties to the Russian mafia.  The club is owned by Marat Bujayev (played well by Moni Moshonov), who at first seems like one of those nice, congenial old Russian men that is easy to trust and like.  Yet, deep down, Marat has deep ties to a Russian  drug trafficking trade that seems to operate within Bobby’s club.  Bobby is not implicitly involved, although he is a drug user, does not stop people from taking drugs in his place, and he sorts of turns a blind eye to most drug related concerns in his establishment.

Bobby’s eyes open up quite a bit when Marat’s dangerous and ruthless nephew, Vadim (played with icy cold malevolence by Alex Veadov), starts to use Bobby’s club as a main base of operations.  Vadim actually asks Bobby at one point if he will join him in his drug empire, at the same time that Joseph is planning to take Vadim’s operations down for good.  During one night there is a spontaneous drug bust, lead by Joseph, at Bobby’s night club and Bobby actually gets taken away in handcuffs due to his inebriated state.  Joseph does not actually have enough to book Vadim, but he does send him a message (in a move that involves some real balls, he grabs Vadim’s roll of money and rips it in half right in front of him).  Being a sadistic brute, Vadim orders a hit of Joseph and in a quick and brutal assassination attempt, Joseph is shot in the face and left nearly for dead.

Bobby starts to blame himself and begins to have a real crisis of conscience about who he is and what he does.  Although his dad never precisely tells him Joseph’s near death experience was Bobby’s fault, he indirectly reinforces it.  To make matters worse, it seems like an entire hit on Burt and the department has been ordered, which means that the police have to take out Vadim quickly.  Bobby then decides to take action and - without his father knowing - he decides to go on an undercover mission with the cops to infiltrate Vadim’s drug operation.

It is here where WE ARE THE NIGHT started to loose me on a level of reality.  From the perspective of who Bobby is and what he represents, I had some difficulty buying the notion that the cops would be willing to get close with him so expeditiously in a joint bust effort.  The level of innate trust they have in Bobby does not seem to be credible at first.  Secondly, there is a whole other issue with the fact that Vadim does not know that Bobby is actually related to police officers.  Call me crazy, but I have never been in the mob, nor involved in drug trafficking, but I have seen enough mob movies to know that when you bring an outsider to your prime and secret base of operations, then you go out of your way to find out as much about him as possible. Go figure.

Of course, the drug bust nearly costs Bobby his life, but he and the coppers do manage to bust Vadim, but you just know that he’ll manage to break out of jail, discover the real relationship that Bobby has with the police chief, and that he’ll put a hit on Bobby, his girlfriend, and dad.  It’s easy to see the arc of Bobby’s character, who will have to overcome inevitable personal turmoil to turn to the side that he should have been on to begin with to get rid of Vadim and his criminal organization once and for all.  By the time the film made it towards its final 20 minutes - which are fairly tense and exciting - I kind of found myself yawning at the predictability of the film, not to mention laughing at how easily Bobby becomes a partner of the police department.   Oh…he is shown taken a written test…and then over night is given a badge, a shotgun, and a bullet proof vest.  C’mon!

Again, WE OWN THE NIGHT never really has the tenacity and inclination to do something fresh with the underlining material.  The story and characters have been around before (Scorsese’s THE DEPARTED has some similar story threads, and the Russian mob was vastly more interesting in another better film this year, David Cronenberg’s EASTERN PROMISES).  The narrative momentum - on top of being preordained - is also clumsy and slow moving.  WE OWN THE NIGHT is 117 minutes, but it feels about 30 minutes longer.

Despite all of this, I think that Gray’s film works in the way it portrays the central character relationships and on a performance level.  I like how Joseph and Bobby are presented as diametric opposites in terms of lifestyles and how their hostility to one another often dissolves into envy.  Bobby wishes he had the love and respect that Joseph has from their father and Joseph, in subtle ways, seems to envy the freedom and independence that Bobby has as a club owner.  The moral barometer and mediator between the two troubled boys is Burt, and Duvall is able to infuse in this character a sort of low-key power and authoritative influence over Joseph and Bobby.  Wahlberg is good here riffing on yet another cop character and has started to regain some level of respect playing supporting roles in dramas, but Phoenix owns most of WE OWN THE NIGHT and has the most difficult part of anyone.  He is a flawed persona that is egotistic and selfish, but when it comes down to it, he rediscovers what it means to be loyal.

James Gray has made better films (like THE YARDS, also starring Phoenix and Wahlberg, not to mention LITTLE ODESSA, which also dealt with dysfunctional family relationships) and there is a lot of WE ARE THE NIGHT that does not hold together well (besides what was previously mentioned, the last few minutes seem like a bad alternate ending that deserves a place on the DVD extra features, not as part of the movie).  However, I enjoyed enough of the film because of its strong performances and the way the story creates a real interesting love-hate triangle between a father and his two sons.  On a character level, the film is rich and textured, not to mention that Gray gives a real sense of dread and impending tension to many scenes, particularly in the film’s central action scene involving a high speed chase.  The film overcomes its rigidly conventional elements are establishes itself as a competent and involving tale of family values, duty, and honor.

www.craigerscinemacorner.com

***1/2  out of  ****

Canadian born director David Cronenberg has always been a master storyteller when it comes to horror stories.  Some of his most memorable works explored people’s fears and anxieties with transformation, whether it be of a physical or mental nature.  Efforts like THE FLY obviously reflected a more bodily transformation, whereas some of Cronenberg’s other noteworthy works, like CRASH, dealt with the oftentimes sickening sexual appetites of its characters.  That’s the Cronenberg touch: He is able to polarize and shock audiences with his extreme and unflinching manner of looking at subject matter that others would not dare touch.

Despite the fact that he has decidedly gone into a much more commercial realm with his recent films, they still nevertheless maintain some of the staple elements of Cronenberg cinema: Tortured and flawed characters plagued by external and internal calamites, not to mention his penchant for shockingly brutal and in-your-face violence and sexuality.  2005’s A HISTORY OF VIOLENCE was easily the auteur’s most populist entertainment, not to mention the most heavily financed of his career up until that point.  Despite that, the film worked exceptionally well as a toned down psychological horror story that concerned itself with the inner demons of its main character.  It dealt with the issues of personal identity and coming to gripes with your past.

Now comes EASTERN PROMISES, which I think sort of embellishes and fine tunes some of the prevalent themes that were contained in A HISTORY OF VIOLENCE.  In terms of story, the two films could not be any different.  VIOLENCE was more of a low key, small town morality parable, whereas EASTERN PROMISES has more expansive settings and personas: it’s located atypically outside of Cronenberg’s main filming stomping grounds and marks the first time he has shot a film outside of Canada (it its case, England) and it features the Russian mob.  However, the film also deals with subtle issues of honor, loyalty, and one man’s dilemma with dealing with right and wrong.  As strong and invigorating character pieces, EASTERN PROMISES represents another film that deals with the cohabitation between human conscience and crime.  In a way, the film makes for an interesting companion piece to VIOLENCE.  More importantly, both revel in Cronenberg’s own insatiable obsession with the material.  To say that PROMISES is another step in the mainstreaming of his films is kind of foolhardy.  If you look closely, Cronenberg’s esoteric fingertips are all over this film.

Perhaps even more crucial is the fact that this film is yet another successful re-teaming of Viggo Mortensen and the director, who both collaborated to much critical accolades in VIOLENCE.  However terrific Mortensen was in their previous outing, he all but solidifies himself up for an Oscar nomination with his performance as Nikolai, a driver and runner for the Russian mob.  At first, Mortenson would seem like the least plausible Russian and in the first few moments in the film he is sort of stiff in his mannerisms and accent.  Yet, as the film progresses and lures you into its story, so does Mortensen’s performance, which reveals a calm, soft spoken, introverted intensity and ferocity.  Wisely not playing up to ethnic stereotypes, Mortensen crafts such an dynamic and vigorous performance that he all but loses himself in the part to the point where you readily accept him as a Russian.  That’s what great actors do: they ask for and get your investment in their characters.  Mortensen is no exception here and - with his work in VIOLENCE - he is starting to seriously cement himself as one of the elite actors of his generation.  Not only that, but he unequivocally showcases no instance of vanity in a show-stopping fight scene late in the film that will go down as one of the finest ever.  More on that later.

The film assaults you from the very beginning in ways only Cronenberg can muster.  It opens with a scene of brutality where we see the viscous throat slashing involving players of an underground Russian mafia that operates in London (other films would have shown the throat cutting quickly, but Cronenberg has his characters methodically saw the jugular like a piece of meat).  This event is juxtaposed with a mysterious young woman that collapses in a drugstore.  She is pregnant and is rushed to a nearby hospital. She dies giving birth to her baby and the newborn becomes a bit of an obsession for the midwife, Anna Khitrova (Naomi Watts, in another great performance).  She makes it her personal mission to protect the baby as if it were her own.  Things get a bit complicated when she stumbles upon the dead woman’s diary, but she is unable to read it due primarily of the fact that it is written in Russian.

Luckily, she resides with her Russian born mother and uncle (Sinead Cusack and Jerry Skolimowski), who assist her with transcribing the writings of this woman.  Eventually, the diary talks her on a journey to a local restaurant run by Semyon (Armin Mueller-Stahl), who appears to her initially as a kind, decent minded old man.  Yet, what she is not immediately aware of is that he is the brutal kingpin to the London Russian mob (the restaurant is just a respectable hood placed over the reality of his real business).  Of course, Anna’s uncle pleads with her to go nowhere near Semyon, seeing as that allowing herself to be in alignment with the mob could lead to nothing but trouble.  At any rate, Anna’s compulsion to find answers overrides all logic and common sense.

Maybe her uncle has a point.  Semyon’s empire is aided by his vile and reprehensible son, Kirill (played with remarkable creepiness by Vincent Cassel) and a quietly charismatic - but violent and lethal - driver named Nikolai (Mortensen).  Nikolai is fiercely loyal, but as the story progresses we grow to learn that he has his own secrets, which eventually leads to his yearning to topple Seymon’s thrown and replace him as the king of the Russian underground.  All of this coalesces with the story of Anna and her quest to uncover the secrets of the baby’s mother and true heritage, which inevitably leads to Nikolai and the mob he works for.

At face value, EASTERN PROMISES feels like its made out of overtly familiar elements.  We have the typical ragtag group of mobsters and most of the standard elements that have been the center of countless other mob films; EASTERN PROMISES does not supplant the other great gangster films, like THE GODFATHER and GOODFELLAS, from the perspective of its handling of the mafia.  What is interesting is how it deals with some of the subtle aspects of Russian mob life.  Cronenberg is not too particularly fascinated with the underlining composition of mobsters, but he is intoxicated by the nature of these men, who are constantly living in a state of transgression and despair.  Their lives are accentuated both by loyalty and deception, both from within and outside the organization.  Again, EASTERN PROMISES works better by honing in on the psychology of what makes these men tick rather than being a diatribe about how these men are organized and how they operate.

The film is also pure Cronenberg with his precise handling of the characters and his meticulous ability to harbor a distinct undercurrent of dread and tension to the proceedings.  He does a virtuoso job and laying the framework of Anna’s story and how her own past inextricably feeds her obsession to protect that baby and learn the secrets of his parents.  Cronenberg layers this in smoothly with Nikolai’s story and his own dealings with the mob he works for.  Nikolai is both a curious compliment and foil to Anna.  He occupies a world that is altogether foreign to her, but they both are driven by compulsions that dictate their actions.  Nikolai’s story becomes even more layered and engaging when a marked twist in his story comes before the final act.  The twist is neither totally shocking nor completely expected.  This is a testament to Cronenberg’s handling of the forward momentum of the story, where we don’t allow ourselves the option of trying to predict any 180 degree turns because we are so transfixed in the characters and interplay.

Like his past efforts, EASTERN PROMISES does not shy away from Cronenberg’s predilection towards gore.  Although the film is relatively light of carnage, a few moments will make the squeamish cover their eyes.  Then there is the film’s remarkable, tour-de-force fight between a butt-naked Nikolai and two Russian mafia goons in a bath house that I guarantee will be long remembered.  What’s astounding here is not only the brutality of the scene, but its raw realism.  Not only does Mortenson play the scene completely in the buff (with oodles of full frontal nude shots of his manhood flailing around), but it becomes clear that no stuntmen where used.  That’s the naked visage of Mortenson being thrown - without padding - against tile walls and floors.  He and the other actors trained for months and choreographed and performed the scenes without stuntmen (the scene alone took two days to film).  It’s one of the most ambitious, audacious, shocking, and incredibly realized bit of fisticuffs I’ve seen on screen.

Through and through, EASTERN PROMISES is Cronenberg’s and Mortensen’s film to shine.  For Cronenberg, the film marks another thoroughly entrancing “mainstream” effort on his part that still brims with his trademark leanings towards ethereal menace and tension, sexually perverse imagery, violent excesses, and characters that constantly deal with their own introverted crisis.  For Mortensen, the film shows him at the top of his form in a pitch-perfect performance as a Russian mobster that modulates between quiet menace and tenderness; he has truly come to form here.  Hopefully, the Mortrensen/Cronenberg collaboration will continue on in future efforts, because EASTERN PROMISES is such a precisely calibrated and accomplished mob thriller.  It establishes a complexity and assertiveness with its material that many other genre films fail to muster.  The film almost transcends its mob elements and essentially becomes a parable about twisted human nature and compulsion, not to mention dealing with the idea of whether morality can exist - or be found - in a savage and uncompromising world.

Pure Cronenberg, indeed.

www.craigerscinemacorner.com

***  out of  ****

The Valley of Elah that is referred to in the title of Paul Haggis’ newest film is the same well known  place where the Israelites were encamped when little David fought that gigantic Goliath with a rock and a sling shot.

The story of how the ordinary man killed the giant occupies one of IN THE VALLEY OF ELAH’s best given speeches, provided by Tommy Lee Jones in perhaps the finest reciting of a bedtime story in recent film history.  Of course, with the actor’s quintessential stoicism and wonderfully under cranked vocal delivery filled with a stern and soft spoken power, Jones makes this Biblical story carry more gravitas than any other bedtime story that could be recited to a tyke.

Despite the strength contained in Jones’ voice, I am not altogether certain how the story of the Israelite shepherd boy killing a humongous Philistine warrior relates to the story and themes of Haggis’ film.  Yes, I do understand what the famous Bible narrative is saying, but I think that what Haggis is trying to say with it is wholeheartedly murky.  IN THE VALLEY OF ELAH is an anti-war film at its core, so what is Haggis’ agenda with appropriating the tale of David and Goliath?  Is he trying to equate the story of David to that of Americans forces in Iraq? What modern parallels is he trying to muster? Or, is he trying to use that tale to encapsulate the story of Jones’ character, who goes into unknown enemy territory of a mental nature to uncover the truth behind his son’s murder?

If there is a drawback to IN THE VALLEY OF ELAH then it would surely be with its message.  The film is yet another in a long, long string of war films that have taken great pains to preach on one principle: War is hell and it turns decent boys into monstrous war machines without a conscience.  Clearly, on this level, Haggis is not breaking any new ground whatsoever.  Also, I think that the director overreaches at times for manipulative emotional effect.  One moment in particular is kind of teeth-grating in its implementation and would-be stirring dramatic effect.  It is the last shot of the film, which is so obviously telegraphed by a moment earlier in the story.  I saw this ending from a proverbial mile away and when the credits rolled by I was overcome by feelings that there certainly was a better and less ham-invested way of concluding this movie.

Yet, my overt criticisms end there for ELAH, which is saved by the wonderful interplay between all of the actors, Tommy Lee Jones’ brilliant, Oscar-nomination worthy performance as a grieving father looking for answers, and by Haggis’ refined and well paced direction.  Haggis certainly has never filmed or has written a bad film.  His resume is slowly becoming the stuff of legend.  He wrote the Oscar winning MILLION DOLLAR BABY for Clint Eastwood and also collaborated with him of FLAGS OF OUR FATHERS and LETTERS FROM IWO JIMA.  He adapted the 2001 Italian film L’‘ultmo bacio into 2006’s THE LAST KISS, which dived into the mindset of male vulnerability better than any recent film.  He helped re-launch the languishing James Bond franchise by co-writing CASINO ROYALE, the best Bond film perhaps since the Sean Connery era.  And, of course, he wrote and directed 2005’s CRASH, winner of Best Picture that year.

Clearly, Haggis is one of the eminent talents in Hollywood, and even if IN THE VALLEY OF ELAH suffers from some decided missteps and aesthetic choices, it remains a thoughtful, touching, and melancholic drama that is less concerned with actual war and combat and more concerned with probing the damaged and nearly irreparable psyche of a father that tries to discover why his son - an Iraq War soldier - was maliciously murdered not in enemy territory, but home in small town America.  If Haggis was trying to make an anti-war film, he has missed the boat.  The message is a bit too obviously constructed and perfunctory, not to mention that I never gained insight as to whether he was saying that the Iraq War was justified or not.  He does say that the war has had a paralyzing impact on soldiers, but as to whether he thinks it’s a valid effort, the results are convoluted and jumbled.

That does not completely matter, because this film is owned by the presence of Tommy Lee Jones, who gives one of his most searing, sad, and sobering performances of his career. His work here is a masterpiece of soft spoken earnestness and caged anger.  He is grief stricken by   his son’s barbaric demise (his body was burned and cut into pieces), but he gathers up all inner strength and fortitude and goes forward on a courageous quest for answers.  His character redefines guts and perseverance.  Most other fathers would have wallowed up into pity and remorse; Jones’ father saves his tears for later.  He does not have time for them - he must and will find out the truth of his son’s murder.  In a way, he becomes such a beleaguered and strong figure of authority and compulsion and only Jones can find the right pitch and tone to pull this off perfectly.  He does here.

The film is very loosely based on actual events; names and particulars have been changed.  IN THE VALLEY OF ELAH was inspired by the real story of Richard Davis, and Iraq War veteran that was murdered upon his return home in 2003.  His father, Lanny Davis, a former military police officer, mounted his own investigation into the crime.  The film uses that grievous story as a springboard for its own of Mike Deerfield, a young Iraq War soldier goes A.W.O.L..  His superiors give his father, Hank (Jones), a call to inform him of this.  At first, Hank is frustrated by the news, but he inevitably gets out of bed and decides to look into his son’s whereabouts.  His motivation is clear: He is concerned for his son and was a former military police investigator, not to mention that the military could give his son some nasty disciplinary action for him jumping ship.

Hank leaves his home and his troubled wife (Susan Sarandon, giving a strong performance in a somewhat underwritten part), and heads to Fort Rudd in New Mexico.  When he gets there he looks around the base, his son’s room…everywhere and anywhere…to get some answers.  He also tries to get the assistance of a lowly misunderstood police officer named Emily Sanders (Charlize Theron, in another stand-out performance).  Emily has her own emotional battles: she is a woman in her largely male precinct and gets no respect.  She is delegated to crimes involving animals.  When she encounters Hank at first she is immediately cold.  However, when a mutilated corpse is turned up and is revealed to be Hank’s son, both Hank and Emily band together in an effort to combat the lack of assistance by the military police (that is headed by Lt. Kirklander, played by the very decent Jason Patrick) in order to get some answers.

When IN THE VALLEY OF ELAH focuses on the murder investigation, it is a strong and compelling who-dunnit.  The fascinating dynamic is primarily the relationship arc between Theron and Jones’ characters.  Both reflect each other’s own despair: She desperately wants occupational respect and to be a woman with a voice and he also desperately needs to be taken seriously while investigating his son’s murder. T he best moments of the film involve Hank pilfering through his son’s belongings, slowly but surely gathering clues - no matter how mundane - to piece together the crime.  He stumbles upon letters, his son’s Bible,  and - most crucially - his son’s cell phone with some damaged video files on it.  Luckily - and perhaps a bit too conveniently - Hanks secures some assistance from a local tech head who repairs the files for Hank to see.  When he does view them, he is shocked by the depravity of the war his son was involved in.

Again, IN THE VALLEY OF ELAH lacks authority while dealing with the hellish nature of combat and its effects on man.  It’s not that the message offends, nor is it not an important one to be had.  It’s just a matter of saturation:  I’ve seen this too many times before, and done better.  Yet, the film captivates and enthralls more from the smaller police procedural narrative and from the wonderfully introspective performances by Jones and Theron.  Jones, as mentioned, is note perfect with his role as Hank and Theron also generates considerable empathy with the plight of her character.  Certainly, she is as world weary and troubled as Jones’ father.  The two play so intuitively off of one another and command such effortless chemistry from the smallest of moments.  Sarandon - in an abbreviated role - captures her characters’ anguish in a heartbreaking scene over the phone, and Jason Patrick perhaps has the slyest and trickiest part of the film playing a military cop that is neither an antagonist or a protagonist.

I did not like IN THE VALLEY OF ELAH’S overwrought and hammered down handling of its themes and messages, nor did it provide any real insight into the director’s mind set about the Iraq War.  The film is a bit schizophrenic at times with its bipartisan politics - it seems to condemn war as much as pay respect to those that fight for its cause.  The film has just too much grand-standing for its own good, not to mention that it seems to go through the motions with its themes.  But the real reason to see the film is for Haggis’ handling of the characters and the crime mystery within the “war-is-hell” film shell.  And Tommy Lee Jones is so masterful playing his role as if his wounded eyes where the windows to a thousand stories of pain and suffering.  If Haggis reigned himself in a bit and was secured more solidly into the police investigation plot- and cut out that silly final shot - then IN THE VALLEY OF ELAH could have been one of the best films of the year.  Nevertheless, if you forgive the film’s pontificating and drink in the powerful performances, then it still emerges as a highly effective and emotionally charged drama.

www.craigerscinemacorner.com

***  out of  ****

“Love is the delightful interval between meeting a beautiful girl and discovering that she looks like a haddock.”

I am a rabid Farrelly brothers apologist.  Whereas some have been mortified by the lewd and crude content of their films, I have a sort of perverse admiration and fondness for their efforts.  I think that the key to appreciating their films is realizing that subtlety and restraint have no place in their work.  They tackle subject matter and characters that no other comedic directors would touch with a ten foot pole.  They don’t take the easy route for a laugh; their comedies have included the morbidly obese, schizophrenics, the mentally challenged, albinos, amputees, the Amish, conjoined twins, and - in their latest effort - a man that falls in love with a woman…on his honeymoon.

 What they do - and do better than just about anyone - is to stretch the normal and common boundaries of taste and political correctness and fuse those crass elements with stories and characters that you care for and relate to.  That’s what makes their comedies rise well above the tawdry level of disgusting gross out spectacles: They provide characters that we can identify with and put them on an endless parade of set pieces that not only border on the socially awkward, but hurtle right past that designation and into riotously embarrassing.  They never mock their oftentimes physically and mentally handicapped personas and laugh at them; instead, they laugh with them. 

The Farrellys completely recalibrated the comedy genre in the 1990’s and whether or not it was for the better is up in the air.  They certainly made two of the funniest films of that decade in 1996’s KINGPIN (which dealt with an Amish bowler) and their landmark work, 1998’s THERE’S SOMETHING ABOUT MARY (which dealt with a series of oddball characters pining for the affection of Cameron Diaz).  Both films were boldly vulgar and coarse and helped to define the “gross out comedy” genre, one that, unfortunately, has spawned countless lesser imitators.  Moments in those films were sickening, but hilariously so, perhaps because they occurred at the expense of characters that we liked.  Who could forget an infamous moment in KINGPIN where the hapless Woody Harrelson thought he was drinking milk from a cow that he just milked only to subsequently realize that he got it from another animal altogether.  And then there was one of the most mortifying - and categorically funny - sight gags in movie history that  occurred in THERE’S SOMETHING ABOUT MARY when Cameron Diaz grabbed what she thought was hair gel off of Ben Stiller’s ear, only to be revealed to the audience that the “gel” was another bodily substance entirely.

All of this helps me build towards THE HEARTBREAK KID, which marks the re-teaming of MARY star Ben Stiller and the Farrelly brothers.  To say that the film has a considerably amount of expectations is legitimate (MARY has be lauded as the film that launched the careers of its star and directors, not to mention that it still remains one of the funniest films of the last ten years).  Maybe not PHANTOM MENACED sized exceptions, but strong ones nevertheless.  After viewing THE HEARTBREAK KID it is certain that it does not rank among the Farrellys’ best efforts, nor is it even close to being the finest, side-splitting comedy of the year (that honor goes to SUPERBAD and KNOCKED UP), but it still has enough genuine big laughs, naughty spectacle (refreshingly, the film is very appropriately rated R, a content zone that the Farrellys seem very adept at), and sometimes shocking scatological shenanigans to savor.

If the film’s premise seems familiar then that’s because it’s based on the original 1972 film of the same name directed by Elaine May, written by Neil Simon, and starring Charles Grodin, Jeannie Berlin, and Cybill Shepherd.  That film - voted number 91 on the AFI’s list of the greatest screen comedies - was a romantic black comedy that followed a Jewish New Yorker and newlywed (Grodin) who meets and tries to woe a beautiful blonde bombshell (Shepherd) all while being on his honeymoon.

The Farrelly version maintains the same basic plot, but this time it changes locations (the Florida beaches for Mexico) and the man hooks up with the blonde first and marries her and then falls for a more conservatively attractive woman on his honeymoon.  The very troubled young man is played by Stiller, who is an unmitigated master of playing ordinary men plagued by situations that can be socially paralyzing.  Stiller plays a San Francisco sporting goods store owner Eddie Cantrow, who begins the film as a hopeless single.  His father (played very humorously by Stiller’s real-life dad, Jerry Stiller) has long aspirations that his son will get “some tail”.  Eddie’s best friend, Mac (Rob Corddry, also very funny in a bit part) also seems to put a bit of pressure on his buddy to start looking for that special someone to spend the rest of his life with.

One fateful day Eddie has a meet cute with a blonde goddess from above named Lila (played by real life goddess and future WATCHMAN star, Malin Akerman) who is assisted by Eddie in dealing with a purse snatcher.  The two hit it off and Eddie seems really drawn to Lila’s physical beauty and her all around soft spoken kindness.  Initially, she seems like a real winner that any man would want to spend the rest of his life with.  Unfortunately, Eddie finds out from her that her research job wants to move her to Germany and only a “marriage” could convince her bosses to keep her in San Francisco.  Eddie then goes into crisis mode and tries to decide whether he should take the plunge and marry this woman.  With the help of his dad and best friend, he decides to propose and the two get married.

Big mistake.

Things start to go south really fast right after they exchange vows.  Eddie meets Lila’s mother at the wedding, who clocks in at what appears to be 300 pounds (the joke here is that Lila’s wedding dress once fit her mother, meaning that Lila could also physically deteriorate fast).  Then the two drive to their Mexican honeymoon spot and Lila because irritatingly overbearing and obnoxious as she sings literally to every song on the radio.  Then there is the sex that - to Eddie’s horror - is anything but pleasant and magical.  Lila is such a screaming, contorting, S&M control freak in bed, using perverse techniques that Eddie has never even thought of.  One scene in the film showing their lovemaking has to be one of the funniest sex scenes in along time, where Lila berates Eddie to thrust harder to the point where he is going so fast that it appears that someone has hit “fast forward” on a remote control.  The next morning she is shown sleeping soundly, whereas he is on a chair, rocking back and forth, all while assuming the fetal position.

It gets worse.

Eddie then finds out that Lila lied and is actually unemployed, is thousands of dollars in debt, was a former cocaine addict, and now has a deviated septum as a result of her drug taking (the Farrellys milk this problem for a lot of comic mileage).  To make matters even worse, Lila gets an unbearably bad sunburn when she refuses to use any sun block.  Redder than an apple and with huge boils all over her body, Lila demands to be left alone and Eddie begins to stroll the beaches of Mexico in an effort to re-think his life-long commitment to his now crazy wife.

It’s at this point when he meets up with a cute vacationer named Miranda (Michelle Monaghan) who is with her entire family.  Slowly, Eddie begins to discover that he has more in common with her and her family than he will ever have with Lila.  He soon starts to fall for Miranda, which boils down to an inevitable showdown between Lila, Miranda, and himself, which includes - in order - him being attack by a sea creature, Lila publicly urinating on the wound on his back from the creature, Miranda’s shock and quick trip back to the states, and Eddie’s many failed attempts to cross the border back to the US with illegal Mexican immigrants in order to get back the woman he loves.

There is a lot of amusing material here in THE HEARTBREAK KID and the performances are key.  I especially liked Jerry Stiller playing Eddie’s sex abscessed father, who has a very funny moment where he has to give back Lila a pair of her panties that went missing.  Rob Corddry is equally amusing as Eddie’s friend, especially in one scene where Eddie seems to be indirectly criticized at another couples’ wedding and later in a moment where he reveals his bangs growing out.  Ben Stiller, of course, is on auto-pilot playing an everyman doofus that is faced with insurmountably awkward situations that impede his happiness, but he does it so well (his most hilarious moment occurs while he is trying to break up with Lila and maliciously berates a musical Mexican quartet that are attempting to serenade the two; his comic ferocity here is inspired). Then there is Malin Akerman, who has the difficult task of playing a part that begins by being down to earth and charming and then disintegrates into depravity and vile animosity.  The fact that she makes the transition so smoothly is a testament to her performance.  She is a real trouper here.

Of course, this is also a Farrelly brothers effort and no effort on their part was spared with going for broke with scenes and sight gags of shocking grotesqueness.  One scene in particular rivals a similar one in THERE’S SOMETHING ABOUT MARY for shock value (the moment where Stiller reveals to the camera what male part he got caught in his zipper) where Lila reveals a vital and much talked about portion of her anatomy.  The Farrellys are undisputedly at their best when they amalgamate squirm-inducing raunch with affable characters.  For the most part, this hybrid formula bares successful fruition in THE HEARTBREAK KID.  If the film has a fault then it would be that its crassness and luridness is not as cutting edge as it was ten years ago in MARY.  Certainly, the brothers were undeniable forerunners in this department, but moments in THE HEARTBREAK KID never titillate or wallop viewers over the heads as forcefully as similar scenes in their best films.  As a lowbrow, R-rated romp of sleazy spectacle, the film is certainly entertaining, but just not as fresh and as corruptly endearing as KINGPIN or MARY.

The there is the film’s final act, which shows Stiller morphing into a grizzled bandit trying to illegally get back into the US and when he meets back up with Miranda it’s more creepy than funny.  The film’s attempts here at being a dark, black comedy are misfires.  Yet, in the end, THE HEARTBREAK KID overcomes its deficiencies by being yet another dependably funny Farrelly brother comedy that has an undercurrent of sweetness amidst all of its obscene guffaws.  Like their other films, I admired the Farrellys’ gutsy showmanship and lack of refinement with the material, which is often a detriment, not a virtue.  Perhaps this is no more indicative than in the final moment in the film, which paradoxically is both a rosy, happily ever after ending and one that drips with dark irony and gloom.  Only in a Farrelly comedy could the final words of the hero be “F- - k me.”

www.craigerscinemacorner.com

*1/2  out of  ****

Geez…I have not been this depressed in a long time.

I can’t recall - in all of my three and a half years as a film critic - being a victim of seeing such an abysmal streak of terrible films…all in the same three week period.

September started with the woefully incompetent action thriller WAR; then came the nauseatingly wretched SHOOT ‘EM UP (which is no where near as fun and entertaining as many other critics have stated); and then came THE BROTHERS SOLOMON, as intellectually bankrupt and void of genuine merriment as any recent screen comedy…except NORBIT, of course.

Now comes GOOD LUCK CHUCK, which its star, Dane Cook, has described in a recent interview as his comedy “baby”.  If that assertion has any truth, then I certainly hope that he does not become a literal father in real life, because I am highly dubious of his parental skills.

GOOD LUCK CHUCK is another 2007 comedic offering that is teeth gratingly bad, so wretched that it has received an almost unheard of 3% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes.com.  I usually don’t take such collective review stats with anything but a grain of salt, but in this case I seem to be in absolute agreement with my other film critic colleagues.  I think that the real problem with this film is that it tries to duplicate that delicate balance of raunch and sentimentality that the films of the Farrelly Brothers and Judd Apatow have successfully achieved.  Most of the participants involved should have been forced at gunpoint to sit through a marathon session of those directors’ best comedies as a primer as to how to make their own work.

Three words: Mission not accomplished.

I have modest aspirations for a romantic comedy.  Firstly, I need to like the two leads involved.  On that level, GOOD LUCK CHUCK gets it half right.  The female lead is played by Jessica Alba, who thoroughly inhabits in her character a clumsy and shy facade amidst some nicely underplayed sexuality.  Whenever she’s on- screen the film is euphoric:  She’s just so unattainably cute and adorable here.  I think that with all of the limited acting range she has displayed in previous films, Alba certainly has hopes for a strong career playing infectiously attractive love interests.  She certainly bats a .1000 here.

The male lead does sit nearly as well.  He is the before-mentioned Dane Cook, who plays his character in such a smug, camera mugging, and emotionally bipolar fashion that you’re never quite sure whether or not you’re supposed to like and root for this guy or wish that he never,  eeeeever gets the girl of his dreams in the final act.  At one time, his character is portrayed as an affable gentleman that wishes to not take advantage of women that he cares about.  So, in this way, he’s kind of noble and chivalrous.  On the opposite end of the spectrum, his character takes one of the most dramatic 180 degree turns for any lead in any recent romantic comedy and transforms into a creepy stalker that has about as much charm and likeability as a serial killer.  During this section of the film I was not sure if I was watching a comedy or a science fiction film.

Then there is the film’s laughably wrongheaded portrayal of women.  GOOD LUCK CHUCK’s smutty, T and A factor is huge (there is hardcore nudity and simulated sex aplenty here, oftentimes presented in several separate split screens; the film make set a record for most sex acts on screen at one time).  Outside of Alba’s role, all of the other women in this film are zombified super models that exist primarily as luscious sex objects.  There is no attempt at solidifying anything actually approximating human beings here.  Of course, this gives the film a pitiful excuse for having a lot of gorgeous window dressing, but none of the female personas feel plausible.  They are more like sex addicted fiends.  That, in small ways, is somewhat distasteful, if not a bit latently offensive.

The premise for the film could barely tread water in a 22 minute TV sitcom.  The film at least has a somewhat cute opening which is set in the past (the 1980’s to be precise).  This prologue introduces us to Charlie (played as an adult later by Cook) and his buddy Stu (played as an adult later by the monumentally lecherous and annoying Stu Fogler).  They play a game of spin the bottle with a bunch of cute adolescent girls.  Unfortunately for “Chuck”, he gets caught in a closet with a Goth queen that could pass for Marilyn Manson’s daughter.  When Charlie repeatedly refuses to show this girl his mail appendage, she places a cruel hex on him.  For the rest of his natural life, every woman that he sleeps with will fall in love with and marry the next dude she dates.

Charlie grows up and seems to shrug off the hex.  He goes on to become a dentist (to be fair, Dane Cook makes the least plausible dentist ever) and has a successful practice.  His buddy Stu - having such a unyielding sexual compulsion for breasts - became a plastic surgeon that performs implant surgeries (in one sly moment, he reveals that he has Pamela Anderson’s first implants on display in his office, held up on the wall like a shrine).  If anything is sacred, then there is no way that such a deviant and overbearing cretin like Stu should have ever been given a license to perform surgeries.

Anyhoo’, Charlie soon grows to discover something peculiar: He is certainly getting a lot - and I mean a lot - of strange women approaching him asking for a night in the sack.  Stu, being a loyal buddy, does a bit on online research and discovers that there is a wild rumor that his friend is the meal ticket for women to find the man of their dreams.  Stu recommends that Charlie embrace his hexed destiny, which he does rather willfully (who wouldn’t?).  Let’s just say that Chuck would have made Wilt Chamberlain proud.

A curve ball is then thrown at him.  At a wedding of one of his past flames, Charlie meets the beautiful Cam (introduced in a obligatory slow motion montage, played by Alba).  She works for a seaquarium and loves anything and everything to do with penguins (her apartment is a shrine to them).  Apart from that, she is drop dead beautiful…and a spectacular klutz.  Her predilection to inadvertently hurt those around her with her clumsiness would put Mr. Bean to shame.  Some of these moments in the film generate some shocking laughs (as when she accidentally impales Charlie in the back with his dentistry scalpels), but these physical sight gags grow lame with time.

Despite her physical ineptitude, Charlie grows to love her.  The two have a few dates, begrudgingly at first seeing as she does not want to be another notch on his bedpost.  Charlie soon moves to the next level with his relationship, but it abruptly stops right before he hits a home run with her when he realizes that - gee whiz - if he sleeps with her, she will fall for the next guy in her life (why he just does not propose to her is beyond me).  Of course, he abruptly stops making love to her and decides to take his hex to the ultimate test to ensure its reliability.  He decides to ask out a chronically obese woman out on a date and have sex with her.

Sigh.  Gross obesity is not funny.  It’s a sickening physical disease that is about as hilarious as a STD.  I hate it when comedies think that poking malicious fun at horribly fat people is uproariously funny.  In the film the large woman (she looks to be about 400 pounds) is shown in a tight bikini, so tight that her pubic hair spills out.  She is also covered in warts.  Mocking people like this is sort of beyond unsavory, not to mention detestably desperate on the filmmakers part for a laugh.  I find jokes at the expense of the obese as funny as seeing a white man in black face.

But wait, isn’t GOOD LUCK CHUCK in the same mould as a Farrelly Brothers gross out comedy?  Well…superficially…yes…but those two know that you have to balance grotesque spectacle with characters you sympathize with and like.  They too made a film that involved a horrendously overweight woman (the underrated and misunderstood SHALLOW HAL), but they made her a flesh and blood character with feelings and emotional weight (no pun intended).  The jokes were always with her, not at her.  In GOOD LUCK CHUCK the fat woman is a despicable caricature that is portrayed as a salivating, food-loving monster.  That’s cruel.

My issues with GOOD LUCK CHUCK go beyond that.  When Charlie realizes that he can’t have sex with Cam because of the hex, he then inexplicably becomes a creepy stalker.  He follows her wherever she goes so that she does not meet the next guy and hence fall for him and marry him.  At one point Charlie becomes so overbearingly smothering that she rightfully tells him that she is “close to changing her number.”  Why was I the only one in the theatre applauding her at this moment?

Of course, she grows to understand and love Charlie, cuing the rekindling of their relationship and a pre-end-credit kiss.  I never once believed that she could possibly love this jerk so much, even overlooking his chronically disturbing behaviour, which any other woman on the planet would have perceived as a threat worthy of a restraining order.  Because of that, the film is a failure as a romantic comedy: I never invested enough in Cook’s character to root for him, nor did I want Alba to wind up with this perv.  The film’s attempts at sentimentality are flimsy at best and when it’s not being syrupy with the material it tries to push the envelope with gross out gags that are more vile than funny.  Question: isn’t the thought on Stu masturbating into fresh produce more funny than actually seeing it?

GOOD LUCK CHUCK is a comedy that is bound to offend any taste; if you like your films containing backward, misogynist views of women, gratuitous nudity and sex, deplorable sight gags, overbearing characters, and a plot that is as one note as it gets, then this is the film for you.  All others, there is nothing “good” about GOOD LUCK CHUCK.  If anything, it makes one want to up-chuck.  The film is dirty, needlessly foul, and is never once truly engaging and funny.  It’s biggest sin is placing the undeniably ravishing and limitlessly appealing Alba in the middle of such dribble.  She may not be a master thespian, but she certainly deserves better.

www.craigerscinemacorner.com

1/2*  out of  ****

If one scene alone sums up my viewing experience with SHOOT ‘EM UP then it would be the moment where one of the bad guys takes a feces-filled diaper and shoves it in another man’s face. 

I felt as if the whole film was doing that to me.   

SHOOT ‘EM UP is the kind of incessantly implausible, inanely exploitive, and nauseatingly wretched action film that has to be seen to be believed.  Honest.  Just consider its opening scene. 

It involves all of the following elements, and in no particular order: a pregnant woman given birth; a bunch of armed assailants in hot pursuit of her; a lone man with no name figure that manages to gun down most of the baddies, at one point utilizing everything from motor oil to a carrot to do so.  Oh, he also manages to assist the mother give birth to her child.  He has one hand on his gun and shoots anything around him that moves, whereas his other hand is…well…you know.  Finally, the icing on the cake to this introduction is the sickening manner with which the “hero” manages to remove the baby’s umbilical cord.  Considering everything that I witnessed in SHOOT ‘EM UP’s first few minutes, I was really, really worried that the “hero” would also perform a circumcision with his semi-automatic pistol.  Thankfully, I was spared of such an incident happening. 

My description of the beginning of SHOOT’ EM UP only barely scratches this film’s surface.  This has to be one of the most outrageously violent and chaotically over-the-top films that I have ever seen.  Should that be construed as a vile criticism of it or a tongue-in-cheek compliment?  Well, after sitting through the film’s utter onslaught of depravity and violence, I believe that I strongly follow the former sentiment.  SHOOT ‘EM UP is a wasteful and remarkably soulless action spectacle that left a real sour taste in my mouth.  Very few genre films like this have made me feel so totally empty.  When I exited the theatre I felt the need to pull a stranger aside that I passed on the street just for a little bit of human contact and conversation, perhaps to ground myself back to reality.   

There is just something so puerile, nasty, and repulsive about this whole enterprise.  I not sure that it is the violence in it, per se, but how it uses violence to get cheap, infantile laughs.  I have been a remarkably liberal minded person when it comes to movie gore, so I don’t entirely think that it is the number of bodies that are left in this film’s wake that turned me off to it.  No, I think that it is the film’s wanton, almost sadomasochistic, fondness and appreciation for endless carnage that made me ill at ease.  I have seen countless violent films in my time, but this perhaps is the first one that has prompted me to use the term “gratuitous” in a review.  Readers, please take me to task if I have already done so. 

SHOOT ‘EM UP is tawdry pornography that substitutes gun violence for explicit sex…but then again, one moment in the film nearly combines both.  It’s offensive not for its cruelty and savagery with its images and action sequences, but rather in the way it sort of holds them all up for hero worship.  I recall hearing many patrons in the theatre hoot and laugh at the sheer ludicrousness and level of violence in the film.  Certainly, SHOOT ‘EM UP is in no way framed in any sort of earthbound reality (this is the type of film that takes stupendous leaps of logic with its stunts and mayhem), but there is something disturbing with the way some found cheerful entertainment value in the ways its hero kills other people.  I will give the film props for ingenuity in coming up with new and inventive ways for murder (a carrot will never, ever be looked at in the same manner again), but SHOOT ‘EM UP is nothing but a two minute action trailer spread out over 86 minutes.  Everything else in the film is superfluous.  Sure, the film keeps a strong forward momentum of bloody and gory barbarism, but beyond that there is nothing really to recommend it on.   

I dunno.  Does this film think its hip, cool, and irreverent?  Most certainly, but it is nowhere near as clever and acerbic as it thinks it is.  Other trashy films with violent, excessive flourishes never made the bloodshed their main attraction.  The same can’t be said for SHOOT ‘EM UP; this is like a pulpy Quentin Tarantino work minus all forms of intelligence and wit.  The dialogue in SHOOT ‘EM UP is so outrageously wretched that I found myself neither laughing at or with it, the characters are so unsavory and unreservedly cruel and viscous that you never once invest in them, and underlining story is so unabashedly ill-conceived and mind-boggling that you have to wonder whether or not it was the product of a hundred monkeys collective typing away on a hundred PCs.  This is perhaps the first film that involves a conspiracy involving a dirty and unscrupulous politician that is trying to make a bid for the White House and a secret, underground fertility clinic that harvests babies for a rare type of bone marrow.   No…seriously.  The plot is a silly and absurd as the film’s unrelenting murder spree.   

Perhaps worst of all is the talent that is wasted.  We first get Clive Owen, one of our finest actors, who is reduced to playing a monosyllabic hero that goes by the name of Mr. Smith and lashes out with beyond-lame one-liners that would even make James Bond’s stomach churn.  He is a bum with no home or family, but make no mistake about it, when he gets a gun in his hand…or a carrot…he is one of the most dangerous bums on the planet.  As the film opens he miraculously saves a newborn baby from the hands of its dead mother.  Of course, Smith is not a remorseful, stone cold killer without a conscience.  He takes the baby and tries to find the most suitable environment for its safety: a S&M whorehouse that has prostitutes dressed as nuns.  While there he meets up with an old flame, DQ (Monica Bellucci) whose name is an acronym for “Dairy Queen”, which is quite apt for her considering that she allows her customers to guzzle milk right from her…uh…yeah…use your imagination. 

Anyhoo’, it seems that one nasty piece of work really – and I mean really – wants this baby dead.  He is Mr. Hertz (played by Paul Giamatti like he was just the victim of an all night bender of cigarettes, speed, and crystal meth), and he is the kind of foul, repugnant, and reprehensible creature that is not too sick to…say…feel up a dead woman’s breasts, which he does at one point.  Hertz meets ups with DQ, who is almost sexually violated by his smoking gun pistol until Smith turns up to save the day.  After a narrow escape from Hertz and his cronies, DQ, Smith, and the baby seek shelter and time to regroup to plot their next action.  What they uncover is a vast governmental cover up, which culminates in a barrage of gun fights, often involving Smith battling an unspeakable number of evil henchman. 

The baby in the film has to be the most resilient baby in the history of the movies.  He survives halos of bullets, multiple car accidents, fires, and explosions, often at the same time.  He’s death proof.  That fact that it does not die within seconds after child birth is startling in itself, but watching endless scenes involving Owen clutching the baby like a football while evading gunfire and leaping through windows grows considerably tiring.  Surely, the first few instances are kind of giggle inducing, seeing as there is no way a new born baby could survive the battlefield that he goes through with Smith (in one cute moment, DQ fits the baby with a bullet proof vest).  After awhile, you just really tune out.  It becomes so obvious that the baby is either a puppet or a CG creation that your investment is gone completely.

These action scenes are also never once thrilling or exciting: they’re all voyeuristic spectacle.   Now, it could be said that this is the point of a film called SHOOT ‘EM UP, which - according to wikipedia.org - “takes its name from the style of arcade game that involves a player controlling a vehicle or character that fights large numbers of enemies with shooting attacks, usually of a highly stylized nature.”  On that very basic level, SHOOT ‘EM UP unquestionably delivers and is true to form.  Beyond that, it has not one other redeeming quality.  It is purely exists to be indecent and nihilistically crude and vulgar.  The heartlessness and cruelty displayed in the film is nerve-wracking because of the way it thinks that reckless and irresponsible levels of brutality equals sophistication and refinement.  It’s smugness with the material is borderline sanctimonious.

The film’s rigid self-awareness is off-putting.  The director, Michael Davis, definitely thinks his material is a sly and smart send up of the action genre, but what is he really sending up?  Other tastelessly bad action films?  That’s like the coffee calling the kettle black.  There surely is ambition with his handling of the action material; he put together a 17 minute reel of animation consisting if 17,000 line drawings showcasing the film’s action scenes to help sell the movie to studio execs, but not one of them had the foresight to ask whether or not the film would have anything else to offer.   We get a hell of a lot of bang-bang, scenery chewing moments of sheer, video game influenced depravity, but not much else.  When the action is not Herculean in its incredulousness, then it is remorsefully punctuated by a slew of some of the worst dead panned lines of recent memory, the kind that hope to become pop culture catch phrases if they weren’t so drop-dead terrible.  Some of my personal favourites include “I’m lactose intolerant” (when Smith has an opportunity to suck on a woman’s breast) and “He just blew his load” (after a man got shot with his own gun) and “Talk about a hand job” (after Smith uses a severed hand to assist him with shooting a gun that requires that hand’s thumb print identification to use it). 

Hardy-har. 

For a film to receive my dreaded “zero star” rating, it usually has to follow one of two self-imposed guidelines: (1) It either is a complete an utter failure on an artistic level or  (2) it treats its content in a morally deplorable manner.  SHOOT ‘EM UP certainly is not a failure on an artistic level (the film has polish), but on the other criteria it almost certainly adheres to.  I don’t how else to sum up my feelings for it other than to say that I found it to be a tortuous and teeth grating experience at the movies…and that I hated it.  Really hated it. 

I hated it for is wasteful and reckless misuse of Oscar nominated talent like Giamatti and Owen.  I hated it for the way sacrifices good taste and subs in depravity and nauseating excess, which it thinks is cutting edge and really cool.  I hated it for the how smug and self-deprecating it was.  I hated it for the way it never allowed me to find joyous and uplifting escape in all of its set pieces.  I have enjoyed mindless violence before (COMMANDO, anyone?), but SHOOT ‘EM UP is not even good, sick entertainment.  As stated earlier, it’s a two-minute highlight reel of non-stop, bloodletting gun battles spread out over a needlessly long 86-minute running time.  On one positive, the film certainly offers up interesting ways to kill human beings with guns and carrots.  But, if you look beyond its maniacal overkill with its action scenes, then SHOOT ‘EM UP is a regrettably ugly film to sit through; it’s a dreary, depraved, and ludicrously sadistic video game crossed with a heavy metal video trapped in a movie’s body.   Yet, when I grow tired of a video game or disposable MTV videos, I can turn them off relatively easily. 

I couldn’t do that with SHOOT ‘EM UP.  It’s the type of film that should automatically come with a reset button.

www.craigerscinemacorner.com

**1/2  out of  ****

3:10 TO YUMA is the type of western that wants to be introspective and complex with its characters, but instead it offers up more disillusionment in the end than genuine interest.  At the heart of the film is a notion that is not altogether new and fresh for the genre: Can a gunslinger outlaw and brutal killer also be held in high regard for folk hero worship? This can make for a compelling character study, especially for the western - one of the most evocative of all genres - but the problem with 3:10 TO YUMA is its focus and approach.

That is not to say that the film is a wasted effort. Director James Mangold (GIRL, INTERRUPTED, COPLAND and WALK THE LINE) certainly has the artistic chops to pull off this type of film.  The finest westerns, like UNFORGIVEN, have always been morality parables that try to make some sense out of the senselessness of frontier life.  In stark contrast to the depravity of and desolation of the landscape is the characters that operate in it, whom are often amoral and conflicted.  The most memorable westerns are ones that dealt with this odd relationship between humanistic values and the stark disorder of the times the characters live in.

Mangold certainly attempts to rehash many of these Western motifs.  On certain levels, the film works by looking at the nature of how one noble man and one lawless man grow to mutually respect and understand one another, despite the fact that they are separated by ethical and moral grounds.  Framed around them both is a society that does not particularly respect either them.  In this way, 3:10 TO YUMA revisits the cynicism and nihilism that has permeated the genre.  The uncertainty and decay around them is not what allows them to change as human beings; they both are mutually reciprocal entities that feed and change off of one another.

The film definitely is ambitious in terms of themes and approach, but there is an odd doubtfulness that Mangold has with the material, especially with the character of outlaw Ben Wade, as played by by the endlessly versatile Russell Crowe.  He is a bandit, murderer, and overall vicious and mean-spirited lout.  By his own admission, he is not above ruthlessly killing women and children, or shooting a man in the back just to get ahead in life.  He is a despicable creature, to be sure.

Yet, I am not sure whether Mangold is trying to say we should respect this man or despise him.  Crowe has a field day playing the duplicitous nature of this character.  At one time he is charming and irresistibly charismatic; at other times he’s a vengeful sociopath.  As a foil to this law-breaking marauder is Dan Evans (Christian Bale, in yet another thankless, vanity-free performance), who was a Civil War hero that lost part of his leg in battle.  Now crippled, he tries to engage in a noble profession, that of a rancher, but when he finds that that occupational choice is not working for him, he crosses paths with the notorious Wade and joins a caravan that will capture and escort him to the 3:10 train to Yuma prison, where he’ll most likely be hung for his crimes.

It is the relationship between these two diametrically opposed personalities that is the emotional epicenter of the film, and Crowe and Bale are in such universally fine form playing off of one another.  From a performance perspective, 3:10 TO YUMA is an absolute triumph.  On a narrative and thematic level, I left the theatre wondering whether or not logic was stripped out of this tale.  Predictably, the law abiding Evans becomes so frustrated by his own troubles that he makes getting Wade to Yuma an obsessive quest.   Wade is his cathartic release and escape from the thought of foreclosure and bankruptcy.   Wade, in turn, slowing appreciates Evans’ selfless courage and determination in bringing him to justice.  Of course, all of this boils over and culminates in a climatic, requisite gun battle standoff, and you know - you just know - that Ben will find himself valuing Dan so much that he will assist him with fighting off the marauders and getting on board the train because - dag-nammit - he respects his pluck and gutsy determination.

Huh?

It’s these disingenuous aspects of the film that undermines precisely what it’s trying to be.  Wade is such a cruel monster that I never once, at any time, believed that he would actually ally himself with Evans to ensure his own transportation to Yuma and to his certain death.  Now, I can certainly see the allure that Evans has with Wade.  Wade is a free spirit of sorts, who robs banks, overcomes stagecoaches, and has endless amounts of money and a uniformly loyal posse at his disposal.  Evans has no freedom.  His ranch is on the verge of foreclosure, his wife has doubts about their future, he’s a cripple and is penniless.  He’s a man that feels mistreated and victimized by society.  The attraction of apprehending a man that has an affluent lifestyle that he will never have is easily palpable.

I understand the dynamic with Evans, but not so much with Wade.  Are we really expected to believe that he would not kill Evans in a heartbeat to secure his freedom?  And moreover, why would he side himself with Evans against his own posse at one point?  Why would he do this? What motivation would guide his actions?  Is it because he simply begins to understand what Evans represents and that his courage and drive is what allows for him to have a complete change of heart about his own predicament?  This whole angle to Wade rings false.  He certainly is presented as being more than just a merciless killer; he is also smart, crafty, and oftentimes humorous, but it never seems plausible that he would risk his escape from a death sentence just to take a final stand and support the gutsy Evans.  This seems to be in direct opposition to Wade’s natural, inbred impulses.

3:10 TO YUMA is based on the 1957 original film starring Glen Ford and Van Heflin, which in turn was based on a short story by the then up-and-coming Elmore Leonard.  The basic premise is maintained from the 50-year-old film.  We are introduced to Evans who is trying to make a go of his new ranch with wife Alice (Gretchen Mol) and son Will (Logan Lerman).  Evans fears that he has lost his wife’s respect and love, mostly due to the failure of and lack of prosperity he hoped his ranch would secure them.

In order to escape this, he joins a motley crew of men and law enforcement officials to hunt down and capture Wade.  Along for the ride is Byron McElroy (played wonderfully by the grizzly Peter Fonda, giving the screen a lot of character atmosphere), who has a feud of sorts with Wade, and eventually Dan’s son Will joins up with the clan, which really upsets his father.  Being a typical teenage son that defies authority and respects rebelliousness, Dan fears that his son could become too attracted to Wade.  When they do finally capture him and begin to transport Wade to that town of Contention for the 3:10 train, the rest of the film develops a compelling emotional cat and mouse approach to the proceedings.

The trail leading the group of men to the station occupies some of the better scenes in the film, but Mangold films so much in tight close-ups and compositions; he never allows his camera  open up and capture the intimidating grandeur of the environment, which is really mandatory for these types of films (2006’s masterful western, THE PROPOSITION, impeccably understood this, as it created such an eerie and haunting realism to the Australian outback of yesteryear).  At least he gets considerable mileage from the actors and their interplay.  Bale and Crowe, as stated, are truly excellent in their respective parts.  Bale perhaps has the least appreciated performance in the sense that he plays the most wounded and marginalized part.  In stark contrast to the colorful and boisterous Wade, it would be easy to identify with the villain more.  I would say that Crowe has the easier of the two parts, seeing as it would be simpler to sink your teeth into an all-out villain role than that of the internally conflicted hero.  At least Crowe does not make Wade a one-dimensional antagonist.  He’s cunning, whimsical, indescribably smarter than any member of his gang, and he’s even refined and cultured (he is a gifted artists that draws and sketches things as he sees them).

Some of the other supporting performances are also strong.  Peter Fonda seems right back at home with his plump role of the gnarly, fist clenched bounty hunter that craves some serious comeuppance against Wade.  Perhaps the film’s most creepily effective work is by Ben Foster, who plays Wade’s right hand man, Charlie Prince, as a figure that has no problems turning the emotional dial from angry to utterly insane.  I have been impressed with Foster’s abilities at being such a chameleon when it comes to immersing himself into roles that require such a caged violence and bitterness.  He has played parts of such monstrous intensity, as demonstrated in ALPHA DOG and HOSTAGE.  His Charlie Fox is such a recklessly freakish man that he kills for the sake of getting a cheap thrill, not because he needs to when the situation presents itself.

There is so much to admire to Mangold’s western.  Bale, Crowe, Foster, and Fonda are fantastic, the character interplay is intermittently well nuanced and scripted, as is the case of the film’s best scene where Wade and Evans have a quiet conversation before all hell breaks loose at the train station.  The final gun battle is energetic and well choreographed.  However, the film takes an awfully long time to build to its climax, and the middle section of it has sluggish, watch-checking pacing.  And when we finally arrive at the conclusion where we see Wade and Evans take a final stand together, I think the film lost a momentary sense of reality.  For a western that prides itself of being intriguing for its dark themes and morally conflicted and shadowy characters, 3:10 TO YUMA cops out at the end with being far too flattering with its personas.  The climax sanitizes everything the plot that preceded it established.  Mangold’s choices are too telegraphed and conventional and lack credibility in the film’s conclusion.  That, unfortunately, is what did this western in at the end.  Considering all that it had going for it, that is a regrettable shame.

www.craigerscinemacorner.com

*  out of  ****

You know a comedy is in trouble when the blooper reel that is put in its end credits suck.

Usually these outtakes are a pathetic attempt to keep viewers in their seats.  I have enjoyed blooper reels before, even in the worst screen comedies (the one from CANNONBALL RUN was arguably more funny that any five minutes of footage from the film).  In THE BROTHERS SOLOMON we essentially get not flubs and mistakes, but a series of what appears to be extended or deleted scenes and alternate takes of scenes from the movie.  This might be the first feature film that mournfully tries to have DVD bells and whistles in the actual theatrical feature that I can recall.

The painful desperation of this film does not end there.  THE BROTHERS SOLOMON makes two other fatalistic errors in judgment: It tries - and thinks - it’s side-splittingly funny and it attempts to resurrect the already dormant career of Lee “THE FALL GUY and SIX MILLION DOLLAR MAN” Majors.  In the latter case, the star is thankfully reduced to playing his character in a coma throughout 99 per cent of the film, allowing him to essentially sleep through this monumentally unfunny farce.  The way THE BROTHERS SOLOMON has mercy on his soul is worth the one star rating alone.

There are several things that are remorsefully wrong with this film.  Perhaps its largest fault is that it creates such a unyielding level of silence in the theatre while watching it.  There is no worse sound in an audience while watching a comedy that a genuine lack of sound.  I sat in the cinema throughout all of THE BROTHERS SOLOMON and could count on half of the fingers on one hand how many times I heard laughter from the fellow patrons.  That is the ultimate kiss of death for a comedy.

As an exercise in teeth-grating, finger-nails on a chalkboard pratfalls and sight gags, THE BROTHERS SOLOMON is the ultimate endurance test.  Nothing is more head-shaking than when a comedy thinks it’s a lot funnier than it actually is.  While watching THE BROTHERS SOLOMON I perpetually felt like I was the exasperated victim of not being in on a joke.  The filmmakers and talent on board certainly seem to think that their film collaboration is uproarious, but what about the people that will eventually see the film?  Shouldn’t they also be in on the joke?  The movie is just one big build up without a punch line.

What in the world is wrong here? There is certainly talent aboard for the ride.  Will Forte - definitely not among the fine, A-grade SNL alumni - is certainly funny in his not-ready-for-prime time gig.  The same could also be said for fellow SOLOMON co-star and the film’s second SNLer, Kristin Wiig, who is the best female performer on the late night program, not to mention that she was so effortlessly droll in a small part of the shady, undermining E! Network stooge in this year’s best comedy, KNOCKED UP.  Then there is the criminally underrated comic talent of Will Arnett, who arguably gave the most hilarious supporting performance in recent sitcom memory in the great and short lived ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT.  In that show he played a really, really bad magician, and I still bowl over with laughter every time I hear him utter the line, “I don’t do tricks, I do magic.  Tricks are something that whores do for money.”

Hee-hee.

Yet, there is not one ounce of charm, charisma, or apparent comic talent on parade in SOLOMON, which seems to have been infected by some sort of impenetrable virus that has stripped the stars of all of their acerbic wit and whimsicality.  Instead we get Wiig essentially wasted playing things straight against Forte and Arnett (this seems to exhaustively squander all of her comedic abilities). Then we get Forte and Arnett, who I think are trying to play their respective characters as dim-witted idiots with hearts of gold (kind of akin to those same dullards that occupied DUMB AND DUMBER), but here they undeniably fail to generate level of audience empathy for them.  They are so socially inexperienced and awkward that they come across more as creepy stalkers than they do noble-minded simpletons.  Arnett in particular - with his eerie and smug ear-to-ear grin and creepy vocalizations - gives us a character that is about as lovable and endearing as a child pedophile.

Forte and Arnett play the Solomon Brothers, Dean and John, who were never given the opportunity of a normal upbringing.  They were raised by a single father (played by Majors, who looks like he’s had too many bionic upgrades over the years) in - of all places - the Antarctic. They were home schooled and went on to even achieve PhD’s, which is astounding considering their implacable stupidity.  The had very little contact with people in general and their only real experience with members of the opposite sex were with some old Eskimo woman that lived 100 miles away.

They eventually moved to the big city, found an apartment together, and got jobs as scientific researchers…at least I think (the movie never makes it clear).  They are book smart, but have a kindergarten mentality when it comes to women.  Their attempts to score with chicks - as shown in the introductory scenes in the film - are horribly conceived.  John attempts to secure a one night stand at grocery store by paying for a woman’s groceries, whereas Dean makes on catastrophic lapse in judgment when he attempts to get close to his date’s father.  This is shown in the film’s only hilarious and well-timed gag.

Things go bad for the two hapless bros when dear old dad lapses into a coma.  They would have been able to see and speak to their dad before he slipped into it, but they feel the need to make a pit stop at a local video store to dispute a late fee (ho-ho).  They discover from the doctor that it appears that their dad made a comment about wanting a grandchild.  Then, lightning strikes and the two decide to “make a baby for daddy.”  Of course, the two are such hopeless swingers when it comes to the ladies.  One night shows John asking his date if she is ovulating, followed by a clumsy, impromptu proposal.  Dean manages to get close to an obese woman, and just as she’s about to go home with him, she is hit by a bus.  Attempts at adoption go no where when Dean asks the agent whether or not they have a return policy.

The two then realize that they will have to take more dire measures.  They turn to Craigslist on-line and manage to find an unmarried woman named Janine (Wiig).  She manages to take advantage of the two idiots by making them pay her for her services above what she initially asked for (they Brothers manage to pay her $12,000, but she only initially wanted $10,000).  The boys get really excited, thinking that they will get multiple chances to plant their seed in Janine, but she disappoints them by saying that they will use artificial means.  All of this does not sit well with her big, hulking boyfriend, James (Chi McBride, dreadfully unfunny), who does not want to see his main squeeze become a surrogate mother.

The rest of the film then careens pitifully out of control into a series of infantile skits that would never make the final cut on a bad SNL broadcast.  Full finger wag of shame needs to be given to Forte, who wrote the film’s lamentably wretched script.  There are a couple of big laughs in it (Dean’s altercation with his date’s father for starters, not to mention a cute scene in the doctor’s office where he asks whether or not his baby will be a cyclops, seeing as only one eye is developed on the fetus).  The film also gets a few smirks and giggles, but beyond that the film is a disagreeable, comic dead zone.

The real error of the film is how John and Dean are presented.  They have PhD’s, but they have the people skills of two mentally stunted children.  So many scenes involving their incredible naivety want to be cute and amusing, but they emerge as kind of vile and sick.  One moment shows them at a playground trying to get a five-year-old girl into their car for ice cream, to which her mother comes in and rushes her daughter to safety.  Of course, these guys are trying to learn what’s it like to be good daddies, but everyone else rightfully thinks that they’re child sex offenders.  Is this irony supposed to be funny?

Dean and John are never once likeable or sympathetic, and it never once feels genuine that Wiig’s character would ever, ever grow to love these doofuses.  The only character with any level of common sense is played by the drop-dead gorgeous Malin Akkerman, who plays the brothers’ drop dead gorgeous neighbor.  There is one excruciatingly false moment in the film where Janine tries to tell her that the boys are kind-hearted after she rightfully labels them as losers.  The film tries to paint her as a blond-bombshell bitch without any feelings, but considering the sickening attempts that John engages in to woe her, she’s has plausible disdain for him.

Then there is Chi McBride, playing offensively up to black stereotypes as a foul-mouthed brother with attitude.  The way he is brazenly forced to utter variations of everyone’s favourite f-bomb feels like a pathetic attempt for the film to secure a needlessly raunchy R-rating.  Note to all comedic filmmakers out there: Offensive language is not funny if it’s just used to be vulgar for the sake of being vulgar.  Foul words work better when they accentuate a joke, not when they are used to be the joke itself.

Inevitable comparisons of this film to KNOCKED UP seem logical.  The sup-plot with Wiig’s hesitant mother-to-be character draws some obvious correlations, but THE BROTHERS SOLOMON is in no way in the same comic stratosphere as that Judd Apatow laugh riot.  KNOCKED UP knew that the key to making an R-rated sex comedy was t