Craiger’s Cinema Corner

****  out of  ****

Peter Berg’s magnificent THE KINGDOM is the kind of action-thriller that has the perseverance to actually be about something more than just explosions and bullets blazing.  It certainly has the latter elements, and Berg is at the top of his directorial form in handling of the film’s breathtaking and explosive set pieces. 

Yet, THE KINGDOM is an action thriller with its finger firmly placed on the geo-political pulse; it’s one of the rare post-911 films that works so efficiently as a sobering parable on the moral and ethical uncertainty that we have lived in since September 2001.  It’s also a meticulously mounted action film, which contains virtuoso moments of patriotic, gung-ho mayhem.

Loosely based on the FBI’s investigation of the 1996 bombings of Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia’s Dhahran (which Berg read about in the memoir “My FBI” by former Bureau director Louis Freech), with a screenplay by Matthew Michael Carnahan and Michael Mann in the producer’s chair, THE KINGDOM seems less concerned with probing the underlining problems with post-9/11 political relations between nations and instead hones in on how two nations desperately battle in an effort to avoid more bloodshed. 

The film could have easily disintegrated in a sensationalistic action film that shamelessly used the memories of the terrorist attacks in New York for the sake of making a popcorn entertainment.  Wisely, Berg and company avoid long-winded and unnecessary political pontificating.  Religious themes are kept at an appropriate distance and there seems like there is little serious effort to chastise Saudi Arabia for harboring of terrorists.  Instead, THE KINGDOM works better as a visceral and emotional experience.  It deals with the hot-button issues of Arab/US relations and terrorism, but it uses those aspects as a launching pad for a thrilling and absorbing investigative procedural.

The film’s opening title credit sequence is ingenious in its simple effectiveness.  It chronicles - through images, news footage, maps, and graphics - the political and social history of Saudi Arabia from the 1930’s, through to 9/11 and to the present day.  The brilliance of this is how immediately it draws you into the film and establishes the particulars without really dwelling on needless exposition.  Through the sequence we see how the country rose to be one of the world’s biggest exporters of oil and how the US became one of the world’s largest importers of oil.  Evidently, this created a decided shift in the diplomatic relationship between the two nations.  The best part of this approach is how we are not left to linger on these historical facts: it allows Berg to shift quickly into the story.  It’s a perfect introduction because it immerses the viewer in the film’s reality, which only helps to make its opening moments so frightening in their verisimilitude.

The opening sequence after the credit montage also does not waste time, and Berg quickly dives head first into the narrative and begins the film with a massive and shocking suicide bomber explosion - two in fact - that manage to kill both Americans and Saudis.  The target was an American housing complex in Saudi Arabia and the casualties are high.  However, the carnage is not just perpetrated solely on Americas; in one quick glimpse, two Saudis are viscously murdered in a halo of gunfire.  The whole sequence is astoundingly realized and shot, and Berg employs a loose, cinema verite shooting style here and through the rest of the film, the same aesthetic style that separated his FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS miles apart from other football films.

We then are taken to Washington, where we see how hopelessly inert the American politicians are in handling the matter.  Predictably, instead of going in for retaliation and revenge, the bureaucrats opt for a soft-pedaled approach and handle it with the quiet hand of diplomacy.  Clearly, a group of FBI operatives sure don’t like Washington’s lenient handling of the terrorist massacre, and a group of them demand - not ask - that they be transferred immediately to the scene of the crime in order to find out how the attack was planned and to capture the terrorists.

The group is lead by FBI Special Agent Fleury (Jamie Foxx, nicely underplayed and quietly charismatic), who seems to be absolutely shocked that terrorists could bomb such a well guarded compound.  Being a father, he is also stunned by the deaths of so many women and children.  Perhaps even more significant was the fact that one of his personal colleagues at the Bureau was also murdered, so the notion of going into The Kingdom has a personal edge to it.

His elite team is an eclectic group and is made up a rugged and strong female forensic expert, Janet Mayes (Jennifer Garner, who simultaneously plays rough and tough alongside subtle feminine sexuality and vulnerability better than anyone), Grant Sykes (Chris Cooper, once again easily immersing himself completely in his part), and Adam Leavitt (Jason Bateman, whose acerbic and sly delivery provides the film some much needed comic relief).  After making a deal with a Saudi ambassador, Fleury and company are granted only five days on the compound for what would likely be a month long investigation.

Upon arriving, the investigative squad is treated a bit more like prisoners than collaborators in probing the crime scene.  They feel like they are on a goodwill mission, but the level of authority that they have is paltry.  Whereas they want to do a serious and through investigation of the area, others do not give them that luxury.  One American diplomat there (played by Jeremy Piven, who plays smug and pompous as good as anyone) simply tells Fleury’s group to lay low as long as possible, take a few pictures here and there, and then leave.  He also advises them to meet with the Prince in his palace for a great photo op, but Fleury grows increasingly bitter with the lack of an open hand in their investigation.

The crew’s living quarters is a gym with bunks, locked during the night.  They are also only allowed five minutes at the epicenter of the bombings and are not allowed to touch, take, or shoot photos of anything from the site.  They are also not allowed to interview witnesses, whom are in abundance seeing as the bombing took place in broad daylight in front of hundreds or people.  Fleury’s crew has their work cut out for them, and their investigative techniques have been blasted back to the stone age as a result of all of the restrictions they face.

The most fascinating aspect to THE KINGDOM is how it presents the difficulties of Fleury’s mission, which - because of all of the unnecessary regulations and strict rules - would have been impossible for even Ethan Hunt and his M:I-6 crew to crack.  Their daily grind is one of constant opposition.  They have terrible quarters, have very little food and rations, have unbearable heat to deal with, and are barely given instructions or directions to find their way around the city.  Their day does not even begin with a set time schedule (they will be woken up when their liaison opens the gym doors every morning).  There are also cultural obstacles that are intriguing, such as the Yankees’ colorful and ubiquitous use of foul words (which does not sit well in a staunchly religious land) and Janet’s subtle sexuality.  Of course, Saudi women are not accustomed to wearing form fitting tight shirts and pants that reveal their shapely bodies, so Janet’s physical appearance is a constant irritant to the locals.  It does not matter that, in the heat of combat, Janet can take care of business as well as the men, it’s primarily the fact that she seems like an equal within her group and that is a threat to the slanted gender-biases of the nation.

Thankfully, the group eventually gets some support in the form of Col. Al-Ghazi, played extremely well by Ashraf Barhom as a man sternly dedicated to justice at all costs.  Soon, both he and Fleury realize that they will have to disregard their cultural differences and pool their resources to find the culprits of the attack before it’s too late.  The nice dynamic of the film is the way it fleshes out the Al-Ghazi character to be much more than a one-dimensional police figure that constantly is a thorn in Fleury’s side.  Barhom’s performance is a delicate balance act between conveying sympathy and contempt.  He has to be the force of justice in the land and often has to remind Fleury about where he is and what he can and can’t do, but he’s ultimately a noble character in the way he is dedicated to preserving the peace, no matter what the cost.  The immerging friendship that he and Fleury develops is akin to those in a cop-buddy action flick, but the performances and interplay between Foxx and Barhom as so decent that you quickly forget such parallels.

On a technical level, THE KINGDOM is another undisputed triumph for Peter Berg, who has emerged as one of the finest actors-turned-directors of the last few years.  What he has shown in THE RUNDOWN and FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS is his command for creating scintillating and tense action sequences.  The film was shot in Abu Dhabi (capital of the United Emirates) and amazingly in the Arizona desert (where many of the thrilling car chase scenes take place).  There is not one moment in THE KINGDOM where we doubt the integrity of its images.  The divergent locations are seamlessly integrated and Berg is able to brand in his film an incredible documentary vibe to the proceedings.  Much like Paul Greengrass, Berg’s improvisational style - filled with quick edits, shaky camera work, and lens distortion - greatly lends itself to the rich tapestry of the film’s environment.  Whether it be with simple establishing shots or grand and large scale action set pieces (as is the case with a remarkably gripping and exhilarating prolonged action scene in the film’s final act), Berg shows how competent he is at submerging the audience into the gritty, hot, and sand-drenched Saudi landscapes.  This is one of the best looking grungy films in a long while.

Again, its the film’s insistence to be an action film about something that is its most notable asset. As thrilling and intense that the action sequences are, the film’s underlining themes are rightfully sad and disheartening.  THE KINGDOM accurately encapsulates - without needlessly dwelling on them - the sort of moral ambiguity and pathos that grips out world today.  The film certainly will have its critics that say it, at its core, is just another propaganda film that chronicles and hero worships the type of macho, American vigor and patriotism that has dominated its manifest destiny inspired ideology throughout history.  Those pundits miss the film’s more subtle message.  Yes, the American military might, courage, resolve, and will is shown as unyielding in the film and Fluery and company do “win” in the conventional sense, but by the end of the story we get an undeniable sense that no country is the real winner.

That is what makes THE KINGDOM such a rare breed of action thriller: It’s not upbeat and uplifting with its content.  There is an undercurrent of utter hopelessness that permeates it.  One scene alone sums this up and it occurs as a juxtaposed montage: Both an American and a Saudi tell someone close to them that there is no need to worry about the future seeing as that they will “kill” all of their enemies.  In short, no one will win when we are involved in a war of such violent rhetoric.  Ultimately, the film is about a mass murder investigation, but in the end it’s pointless whether or not the crime is solved.  The larger issue is how two worlds will live with one another when there is so much distrust and hatred involved.  It’s these unresolved issues that stayed with me as I left THE KINGDOM and accompanying those memories are the film’s great performances, stirring and evocative locales, and technically dazzling action scenes.  This is one of 2007’s most smart, thoughtful, rousing, and distressing films.

www.craigerscinemacorner.com

**   out of  ****

It’s amazing what two men can do with a tax refund, a personal cash loan from a family member, and a hell of a lot of determination and positive energy. 

That’s exactly what Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird used to launch the phenomenon that is TMNT – aka: The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.  It’s interesting, in hindsight, to see the very modest origins of this very peculiar – and lucrative – super hero comic franchise that spawned a billion dollar empire that could be aptly compared to other profitable toy franchises, like The Transformers and GI Joe.

Back in 1984 Eastman - while during a casual evening out with friend Laird - drew a very humorous looking sketch that would become the basis of everyone’s favorite anthropomorphic mutants heroes.  Using the resources mentioned above, the young artists self published one single, black and white issue of TMNT.  Originally intended as a parody of four of the most popular comics of the 1980’s (Marvel Comics’ DAREDEVIL and THE NEW MUTANTS, Dave Sim’s CEREBUS, and Frank Miller’s RONIN), this somewhat crude independent comic became an overnight sensation.  Independent comics were growing in the mid-80’s, but the fast success of TMNT allowed for the format to explode into the mainstream.  It gave legitimacy to the art form and gave credence to a long list of starving, amateur talent that wanted to have a name in the industry.  If anything, this is probably the most noteworthy legacy of Eastman and Laird’s creation as a whole. 

If one considers where the TMNT franchise went, it’s astonishing to see how dark, gritty, violent, and adult themed those first few issues of the comic were.  In the early Mirage comic book pages, the four heroes in a half shell unleashed as much bloodletting carnage as The Bride did in KILL BILL.  However mature in themes those comics were, the Turtles would be forever changed when they were introduced into the mass market forum.  In 1988 Eastman and Laird met with licensing agent Mark Freedman, who sought to take advantage of their creation for merchandising possibilities.  What happened next is the stuff of legend, and the Ninjas were made more kid friendly and turned into one of the most profitable toy lines ever by Playmate Toys, and was accompanied by an equally popular animated series, which essentially cemented the comic book heroes in the pop culture vernacular.  Whether parents liked it or not, the likenesses of the Turtles were everywhere. 

The success of the Turtles merchandising empire eventually segued into the movie world.  Three low budget live action films were made of varying quality by New Line Cinema: 1990’s TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES, 1991’s sequel, THE SECRET OF THE OOZE (which made the cataclysmic miscalculation of having a Vanilla Ice cameo), and the mostly forgotten 1993 entry, TURTLES IN TIME.  Regardless of the live action trilogy’s lack of worth, they remain a reminder of the overt popularity of these characters. 

All of this, if you’ve been willing to read thus far, leads me to the fourth cinematic incarnation, TMNT, which wisely chose not to create another live action sequel (which, quite honestly, did not lend to the credibility of the heroes) and instead makes the heroes purely in CGI form.  This is probably a smart move, if not a logical one, seeing as Eastman and Laird’s mutants were spawned in comic books and truly made a name for themselves in the animated series.  Chronologically occurring after the events of the live action series, albeit in a manner not altogether advertised, TMNT is able to help free up the characters and greatly expand on the past films in terms of action and scope. 

Granted, scope and action is not necessarily the best improvements that the Turtles could have received in their computer upgraded forms.  Surely, the Turtles have never looked finer, and the action and set pieces are bigger and broader and eclipse anything in the previous film outings, but TMNT seems oddly archaic and unnecessary for today’s film world.  Unlike other highly successful super hero reboots, like BATMAN BEGINS, the nearly 14-year wait since the last film has clearly not allowed the makers to invest in any new and intriguing material here.  These Turtles look the same, talk the same, act the same, and engage in the same sort of no-brainer story arcs, all punctuated by a lot of mindless martial arts mayhem.   

Was there not a better story to tell about four turtles that were dosed with radioactive goo, altered into humanoid form, and then taught the martial arts by their sensei, who happens to be a sewer rat?  For characters that live in the dark and dreary sewers, eat a subsistence diet of pizza, and have no other real emotional contact with anyone else, would they really be as positive and noble minded as they are?  Certainly, there are dramatic possibilities that could have accentuated these somewhat pathetic creatures (let’s be honest, they are creatures – mutants to be exact – and they’re teenagers, which is a troubling time for anyone), but the film never makes these Turtles into compelling freaks.  The only real distinguishing characteristics that they have that differentiate themselves are their weapons and the color of the masks (and why wear masks that only cover their eyes?  Do they think that’s necessary, seeing as they overwhelming look like monsters?).  Instead of infusing some genuine interest into these characters, TMNT seems like another redundant excuse to go back to a merchandise well that was sucked dry and left empty in the early 1990’s. 

Nothing really noteworthy or memorable happens in this film.  We get some hasty exposition, a lame and ill-conceived villain, weakly assembled supporting characters, and a sub plot commenting of the nature of family and bonding.  We are also dealt up a lot of kiddie hijinks; the Turtles still talk, for the most part, in sentences often punctuated by the words “dude” and “doofus”.  Also, the bad guys in this film are lamentable forgettable.  Now that their main baddie, Shredder, has been defeated in the earlier prequel, the Turtles, Leonardo (voiced by James Arnold Taylor), Donatello (Mitchell Whitfield), Raphael (Nolan North), Michelangelo (Mikey Kelley), along with their master, Splinter (Mako, regrettably in his last film role), now have to deal with another real bad ass, an immortal man. 

At the beginning of the film we see that Leo has been sent to Central America for training (how he managed to get a passport, board a plane, and fly over there in our highly protective post-9/11 airline security is beyond me).  While he’s away, the other Turtles do what they do best: Donatello likes to dabble in computers and everything gadget related (in a funny moment, he’s show working as an I.T. specialist, but as to how he got the job is also beyond me).  Michelangelo is the party dude and now works a 9-5 job hosting kid’s B-day parties (again, how a large, mutant turtle got a job like this is beyond me), and Raphael, the rebellious brute of the team, is now a nighttime vigilante wearing a mask and costume that in no way shape or form hides the fact that he is a monstrous, walking and talking turtle underneath.   

Yes, it appears that there is some friction in the group, seeing as they are separated from their leader in Leonardo, but they are also having family issues at the worst time.  It seems that an immortal being (played by Patrick Stewart, who obviously needed to repay a favor to agree to lend his talent to this) has gathered his immortal stone generals with the help of stars aligning and some sort of cosmic…thingy…happening.  Of course, this immortal is introduced as a corporate stooge at first, but it takes no one of unlimited intelligence to put two and two together and see that he is actually the main baddie.  He also manages to team up with what remains of Shredder’s foot clan, now lead by Karai (Zhang Ziyi).  The rest of the plot I will not dwell on, but I will say that it is a bit too convoluted and confusing for this type of film, not to mention that there never once appears to be any modest level of thrilling tension in it.  Of course, we get the standard, run-of-the-mill battle at the end with good against evil and…well…guess who comes out on top? 

If one disregards the lackluster storytelling, then there is something to admire in the glossy sheen that the film showcases the Turtles in.  Taking the modern advancements of CGI technology, the Turtles certainly emote better than their previous animatronic counterparts, and the action set pieces are also heavily amped up.  TMNT is certainly not the best animated film I’ve seen this year (that honor would go to RATATOUILLE), nor is it always pitch perfect in execution (some scenes, like a rain-soaked fight pitting two Turtles against each other – is beautifully rendered, whereas a few other sequences seem a bit less fluid and rhythmic).  Regardless of inconsistencies, TMNT is a solid and polished looking animated film that genuinely increases the artistic palette of Eastman and Laird’s comic creations. 

The voice talent is a mixed bag.  I like the nobility and tonality that Mako gives to Shredder, but the four voice leads playing the turtles do very little to distinguish each other.  Also, someone had the silly idea of casting Sarah Michelle Geller as Turtle friend April O’ Neil, not to mention FANTASTIC FOUR’s Chris Evans as street vigilante Casey Jones.  They’re generally stiff and disinteresting in terms of voice talent.  Patrick Stewart phones in his voice work, but at least the film saves us by having a very brief voice over narration by Lawrence Fishburne, who emotes with painfully stoic and mannered speech patterns; it’s almost as if Morpheus just left after giving his speech to the Zionists before the rave party in THE MATRIX RELOADED and ran to the recording session for this film 

The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles certainly can take top honors as being the most odd comic book characters of the last 25 years, but the three live action films and its newest CGI animated entry do not play up to their peculiar nature.  Instead of going in a new and fresh direction with this landmark 1980’s trendsetter for more modern consumption, we are dealt with a whole lot of the same in TMNT, and by saying that I mean a considerable amount of surfer lingo, lots of pizza eating, lame dialogue, an even lamer story, and tons of gravity defying mutant martial arts mayhem that is never compelling or altogether exciting.  Yes, TMNT looks nice and fans of the Turtles will truly think that the CGI upgrades are an improvement for this series, but beyond its artifice there is not much for both the die hard fan and the agnostic Turtleholic to be entertained by in this movie.  Instead of being a nostalgic and successful re-launch of old material, we get a too much regurgitated material that we have been exposed to already.  I mean, why not take the Turtles in a whole new path that takes full advantage of their freakish nature?  Perhaps they all should have been on Dr. Phil discussing their battles with teen angst alongside their buried, introverted issues with being the product of a toxic, radioactive spill?   

Now that would have been cool…dude! 

www.craigerscinemacorner.com

***  out ot  ****

There should be no denying that Rowan Atkinson is a comic genius.  He has been listed in THE OBSERVER as one of the 50 funniest acts in British comedy history.  He also was recently rated as one of the top 50 comedy acts of all time as voted by fellow comedians.  He was also the star of the BLACKADDER TV series for the BBC, which is widely regarded as one of the finest situation comedies ever produced.  As far as British performers go, Atkinson will rightfully go down as one of the all-time greats. 

At least he is considered just that in his native UK…and perhaps here in Canada.  Yet, Atkinson has never really developed a following in the US as other landmark comic acts have, like Monty Python’s Flying Circus.  Perhaps the only short-term notoriety that he has received stateside was with his character of Mr. Bean, who saw the light of day in the cinemas way back in 1997 in BEAN: THE MOVIE. 

However, that was certainly not the first incarnation of that irreverent persona.  Atkinson, in collaboration with Richard Curtis, created Bean in 1990 as a series of 14 half hour episodes.  Broadcast first on January of 1990 and culminating in October of 1995, Mr. Bean became a comedy phenomenon in the UK.  It would eventually become syndicated in over 200 territories and Atkinson subsequently has became so immortalized in the role that he is often forgotten for his past comedy work.  Whether or not Great Britain wanted it, Mr. Bean became a sort of unwanted official ambassador of the country and would go on to become the face of the nation, that of a clueless and easily ridiculed moron. 

However, that is precisely why I have always had such a fondness for Bean: He’s not a mean-spirited and brutish lout that inflicts pain and misery on others because of his lack of poise and refinement.  I think the key to why I like Bean is that he is a lovable idiot.  Bean is not only stupid, but absurdly stupid, the type of innocuous halfwit that is more harmless than harmful.  Throughout his exploits on TV and in his first movie, Bean was presented as that rare type of disaster-prone nitwit that was impossible to hate.  Described by Atkinson as essentially a “an infant trapped in a man’s body,” the comic pleasure of Bean is watching him try to find solutions to seemingly common and simple everyday problems. 

The most hilarious aspect to Bean was that he seems unrelentingly unaware of the basic ways in which the world works, not to mention that he totally disregards others in the process.  One of the most riotous bits in BEAN: THE MOVIE showcased how he managed to correct a huge smear that occurred in the painting “Whistler’s Mother” after he sneezed on it.  What’s funny is (a) how he managed to fix it and (b) that he does not understand why normal people take offense to how he fixed it.

Perhaps ever more crucial to Bean’s overall comic effect is that he is a whimsical throwback to silent films, relying purely on physical slapstick comedy and the use of very sparse dialogue.  When Bean does, in fact, speak, it’s usually in vocal utterances and monosyllabic grunts that could hardly be classified as any language in particular.  Citing comparisons between Atkinson and Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton is not altogether unfair.  Like those two humorist geniuses,  Atkinson gets incredible comedic mileage more for what he does and less by what he says. 

There are a lot of moments just like that in his new – and reportedly last – Bean film entitled MR. BEAN’S HOLIDAY, which could have found inspiration from inspired by the similar antics of Jacques Tati’s Mr. Hulot in MR. HULOT’S HOLIDAY (1953).  In this film Bean says good-bye to his home nation and takes a trip through France and ends up crashing the Cannes Film Festival.  One moment in particular would have made Keaton proud, which involves Bean, with video camera in tow, exiting a movie theatre and walking from its rooftop onto various vehicles - some moving, some not - and then finally making his way to the streets and to the beaches of Cannes, all while completely being unaware that he could have seriously killed himself if he took one misstep.  That’s the Beanian touch: a normal human being would have gone down the stairs and exited through the door.  In his universe, that would have been too complicated. 

There are other scenes that inspire giggles.  At one point following a misunderstanding involving a taxi at the Gare du Nord railway station in Paris, Bean is forced to make his way rather unorthodoxly towards the station to board his next train towards Cannes (he essentially looks at his compass and proceeds to walk in one straight line for what seems like miles, never stopping for pedestrians, vehicles on the road, or even buildings for that matter).  Another sequence later shows Bean’s particular distaste for the fish cuisine at a posh French restaurant.  Realizing that he despises oysters, he manages to find a sneaky and sly way of disposing of them.  Let’s just say that if you’re eating at a luxurious restaurant and a simpleton sitting at a table next to you appears to dislike oysters, make sure you look at your handbag before you reach in it for your cell phone. 

How did a fool like this manage to get a trip to France?  Well, he won the trip at a Church raffle when his number, 919, is picked (of course, Bean at first thinks he’s a loser, as he reads his ticket upside down as 616).  By the time he reaches Paris (a miracle in itself for this man), he starts taking shots of everything with his Sony camcorder.  At one point he becomes so fixated with having himself be in a shot walking into a train, he stumbles upon and asks Cannes jury member and Russian film critic Emil Dachevsky (Karel Roden) to take some shots of him.  After a series of shots, the train starts to move and Bean boards, but Dachevsky is unable to also get on board.  Bean, in the meantime, hooks up with the critic’s son Sam (Max Bauldry), who is also on board.

Of course, a series of disastrous mishaps follow that causes Bean and Sam to lose their wallets and passports.  As the two make their way through to the next station and miss the next train, the two see Sam’s father go by on another.  He tries to hold up his cell phone number against the window so Bean and the boy can immediately call him.  Unfortunately, Bean writes down every number correctly…except the last one.  So, being who he is, Bean decides to write down every permutation of the phone number that he can possibly think of without knowing the precise last digit.  Of course, his list is incredibly long, and the two run out of change for the phone.  So, Bean does what anyone else in his position would do when faced with having no money: he begs for money on the streets by miming Puccini’s “O mio babbino caro”.  Finding someone to wire him the money would have been too complicated. 

More bad Bean mishaps ensue.  He and Sam manage to secure buss tickets to Cannes, but Bean’s ticket gets caught on a chicken’s leg (don’t ask), and he manages to follow it all the way to the country in a high speed pursuit involving a pickup truck and a ten speed bike.  Of course, this leads Bean to stumble on to the set of a quaint French village, circa WWII.  It turns out to be a unreservedly pretentious TV commercial for yogurt, complete with German soldiers, and it is directed by control freak and the downright egomaniacal Carson Clay (played very humorously by Willem Dafoe).  Of course, the doofus in Bean all but destroys the set. 

Still desperate to get to Cannes, Bean hitchhikes and is picked up by unknown French film star named Sabine (the gorgeous Emma de Caunes), who is also on her way to Cannes, but for the 59th Film Festival.  She has a small part in Clay’s newest film and does not want to miss the premiere.  The film that is shown is one of the film’s comic high points, which highlights the height of vanity by its director (the title card reads “Carson Clay presents a Carson Clay film starring Carson Clay).  The film is such a sanctimonious bore that it puts half of the audience to sleep.  Unfortunately for Sabine, her major scene was cut by the obnoxious Clay.  However, Bean manages to sneak into the screening and you just know that some of his vacation footage that was shot on his camera will make its way to the screen at Clay’s premiere. 

MR. BEAN’S HOLIDAY is not a laugh-out-loud riot, nor is a completely wasted comic vehicle for Atkinson’s agreeable talents.  Certainly, there are many scenes in the film that have a large set up for laughs and never really pay off in any hilarious manner (some of the jokes and sight gags are a bit too telegraphed).   Yet, at least with every failed joke there is one that works, and at least Atkinson and company have a sort of daring imagination and youthful spirit to some of the hijinks.  The film is also cute and warm hearted and not ill-tempered and crude with its comedy (it’s rated G and is refreshingly entertaining for both children and adults).  The film succeeds, more or less, by being a farce of sustained buffoonery and overt silliness.  As effective counter programming to the other R-rated raunch fests like SUPERBAD and KNOCKED UP (great in their own respects) MR. BEAN’S HOLIDAY is breezy and inoffensively droll.  It does a decent job of showcasing Atkinson’s rubber faced and spidery-limbed imbecile to proper effect and Dafoe is spot-on funny in his tongue-in-cheek performance as the director with a vision that can barely hold up his own self-riotousness. 

For what it’s worth, I did not laugh hysterically throughout MR. BEAN’S HOLIDAY,  but I sure smiled a lot.  The film definitely does not click into gears all of the time and its plot is just a silly excuse for a series of cobbled together comedic skits, but that should not bother those that have a taste for slapstick, and Atkinson is in fine form here.  This is reason enough to recommend the film, which professes to be nothing more than a pleasant and amusing diversion.  However, the film does have ambition.  It wisely ends with – you guessed it – Bean and all of the characters from the film miming a large musical finale, singing along with the famous song by Charles Trenet, “La Mer” (Beyond the Seas), with arms raised in the air.  For a man of his limited intellectual faculties, and his penchant for finding the craziest and most insipidly complicated solutions to problems, any other ending would have been a let down. 

www.craigerscinemacorner.com

*  out of  ****

WAR is not only a bad film, but also a stunningly incompetent one at that.  It manages to display its utter ineptitude by failing to utilize stars Jet Li and Jason Statham to any satisfying degree, nor does it play up to their strengths as martial arts action stars.  Not only that, but the film has a late breaking plot twist of such shameful, irretrievably inanity that a scene having one of the characters waking up in a cold sweat and stating, “It was all just a horrible dream” would have more fulfilling. 

WAR is a decidedly wasteful and dull movie-going experience, made all the more frustrating because it certainly thinks its smarter than its viewers, when in actuality the audience can spot potential plot developments from a proverbial mile away.  Rarely have action films invited such incredulous scorn.

But wait!  I know what you’re going to say: This film stars Jason Statham, my self anointed king of an action film genre that I have dubbed (copyright pending) Cinema of Incredulity.  His past films, like the two TRANSPORTER films and – to an even larger degree – last year’s howlingly entertaining CRANK, epitomize this genre.  You know, the kind of action films that have a laughable and commendable level of self-awareness about just how improbably outlandish and preposterous they are with their stunts and set pieces.  I sort of have a peculiar appreciation and fondness for the way Statham’s last few films willingly jumped over endless chasms of impossible reason and common sense with their action scenes.  You kind of laugh at and with these moments, which, as a result, is why I kind of derived so much enjoyment out of watching them.  You not only checked your brain at the door, but also had a valet take it and secure it for safe keeping for you until you left the theatre. 

WAR could have been in the same proud tradition of this genre, but it is such an excessive squandering of possibilities and expectations.  Instead of being infectiously silly and over-the-top with its spectacle, it becomes a ponderous, oftentimes incomprehensible, and tensionless thriller that tries way, way too hard to be taken seriously.  This is compounded by the notion that Statham and Li never really play characters that we invest in and like. 

Yes, they are in prime, stoic, and stone-cold ass-kick mode throughout most of the film, but there is no joyous life and forward momentum to the story that they are involved in.  I grew dizzy just thinking about how WAR could have been a throwback, 1980’s buddy cop action flick with Statham and Li having fun with their roles.  Instead, we get an insipid and trudgingly dull YOJIMBO rip-off with lame brained plot developments and too many unsympathetic and minimally developed characters.  The final icing on the cake would be the laughably pitiful dialogue and performances, the latter being keening demonstrated by Li, who proves his genuine lack of range in English speaking films.  Perhaps WAR’s biggest sin is that when Li and Statham do go mano-a-mano, it’s such an incomprehensible letdown that you kind of want to go to the ticket booth and demand a refund.

Well, is WAR tense and taut action thriller (as advertised) that pits Statham versus Li in a battle of wits and martial arts supremacy?  Not really.  It sacrifices infectiously bombastic action for story (big mistake) and the film’s exposition is done at such a snail’s pace that you check your watch feverously when you should be getting involved with the proceedings.  The setting is San Francisco and there is a war brewing with the Yakuzi and the Triad.  The Japanese bloc is lead by Shiro (Ryo Ishibashi) and his daughter, Kira (Devon Aoki).  The Chinese faction is helmed by Chang (John Lone).  In pure YOJIMBO mode is a deadly assassin named Rogue (Li, not to be confused with the X-Men heroine) who mysteriously pits both sides against each other.  Shiro thinks that he is in strict cahoots with the killer, whereas Chang also thinks he has the same relationship.   What’s an evil organization to do?

Meanwhile, a US FBI agent named Jack Crawford (Statham) has his own stakes in catching Rogue.  You see, he could care less if both the Yakuzi and the Triad wipe themselves off of the face of the earth; he simply wants to get Rogue for personal reasons.  In the film’s opening segment (horribly edited and murky in its construction), Crawford saw his partner brutally killed.  Ever since, Crawford has made finding Rogue is top priority.  I mean, Rogue killed his partner, his wife, and child right while they were preparing a family BBQ.  That son of a….it’s one thing when your partner is wasted, but when he is eradicated while prepping T-bones on a summer day, then it’s personal.

Yet, Crawford begins to see that the seemingly unstoppable Rogue is actually pitting both crime organizations against one another.  One of my biggest misgivings about the film is that instead of making it a personal revenge and cat n’ mouse action thriller pitting Rogue and Crawford against each other, it squanders most of its time on the rival crime gangs, neither of which are established as being anything intriguing or compelling.  Notwithstanding that, but WAR does a painfully insipid job of trying to explore the motivations behind Rogue’s actions.  Why, after all, would Rogue become so disingenuous and disloyal to both crime organizations and why would he resort to such complex schemes to exact revenge against both? 

Your guess is as good as mine.

This complaint also bares some weight when one considers that the character of Rogue has to be one of the most banal and disinteresting killers in recent movie history.  As played by the  dramatically stunted Li, there is not one ounce of three-dimensionality to him.  He’s not a character, but a soulless and colorless plot device that never commands our interest.  Action films, it has been said, are only as good as their villains, and Rogue is such an unmitigated bore as a character that you often have to slap yourself upside the head and remind yourself that he’s important.  How can you have a rooting interest in the heroes when your villain is a bland and characterless drone?

Perhaps this has something to do with Jet Li, an action star that I admire for his physicality, but have had a difficult time appreciating on a level of acting skill.  I certainly have truly liked many of his native language films (last year’s FEARLESS showed a mature and powerful performance by Li, both in terms of drama and action), but I have yet to see an American film where he was not reduced to a one-note, emotionless, monosyllabic cardboard cutout.  I am not sure if this has to do with his lack of command of the English language or his actual thespian skills,  but Li has shown himself to be so categorically awful in his performances in US films.  Yes, other martial arts stars, like Jackie Chan, speak in broken English, but at least Chan brings charisma, whimsicality, and charm to his performances.  There is none of that with Li, who is reduced to a walking robot in WAR; his performance is done with minimal effort and fuss, just enough for him to be audible to audience members.  Sure, when he’s in fight scenes, Li is a commanding screen presence, but beyond that he’s as stiff and wooden as a surf board.

I could go on and on about the other areas where this film fails.  The action, although energetic at times, is sloppy and spastic, and director Philip G. Atwell (a music video vet) never seems to create any sense of rhythm and coherence.  The best way to shoot these scenes is to use a less-is-more approach and let the physicality of the actors sell the action, not the MTV video inspired editing and camera work.  Statham, who is a fiery and cagey action star or remarkable dexterity, is more or less subdued and has very little opportunities to display his athletic skills (although compared to Li, he’s Laurence freakin’ Oliver in the acting arena).  Again, these two action stars are done a terrible disservice of never really playing off of one another.  Their climatic fight scene is so hastily and quickly concluded that you shake your hands in the air and scream, “And?”

Of course, there is the film’s would-be plot twist, which I will not reveal to you here, but I will say that it unalterably betrays everything that occurs before it, not to mention that it makes you question a lot of the motives of one of the main characters.  A much more simpler and satisfying conclusion would have been to simply make the third act a stirring and action packed battle between Rogue and Crawford without any other narrative baggage.  When we learn of Rogue’s true heritage, it never really feels plausible.  Certainly, smart viewers could also see it coming if one thought hard about the film’s underlining story, but the terms “thinking hard” should not be used in the same sentence when describing WAR.

I ever so desperately wanted WAR to be a blissful symphony of wall-to-wall carnage and maddening, comic book gravity defying violence that made other Statham action films such a giddy pleasure.  Instead of being entertaining and enjoyably incredulous with its action spectacle, WAR is just incredulously horrible.  By failing to fully utilize the combined martial arts talents of Statham and Li, and by involving them in a long-winded and torturously dreary and tired storyline of rival crime gangs, WAR is disappointingly boring and lethargic.  If you decide to focus on story and characters, then make those elements intriguing.  If you decide to go for broke and have a considerable amount of gratuitous martial arts mayhem, then don’t hold back.  Unfortunately, WAR is both a regrettable failure from both a narrative and action level and will surely inspire monumental dissatisfaction for even hard-core action fans. 

The film, in the simplest terms, is like Michael Mann’s HEAT…for dummies.

www.craigerscinemacorner.com

***  out of  ****

Has there been a classic science fiction novel that has seen more cinematic permutations than Jack Finney’s THE BODY SNATCHERS? 

I doubt it.  The work first saw the light of day in 1956 as INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS, directed by Don Siegel, and was recently selected for preservation in the United States’ National Film Registry.  Then came a remake in 1978, written and directed by Phillip Kauffman, and it marked one of the first instances were both filmgoers and critics alike admired the remake almost as mush as its predecessor.  Criminally forgotten by most filmgoers is Abel Ferrera’s 1993 version, BODY SNATCHERS, which arguably was as effective, if not more, than the two previous versions.

Now comes remake number four in the form of THE INVASION, which severely challenges my own preconceived notions about how to critique remakes.  For me, a remake is only a worthwhile endeavor if (a) it remains faithful – at least in tone – to the original that inspired it and (b) it finds a fresh and revitalizing way to tell the original story for contemporary consumption.  On those two levels, I think that THE INVASION works.  It retains the essence of Finney’s original premise – that of alien life forms that come earth, infect humans, and unalterably changes them for the worse.  It also wisely recounts what made the previous three films so efficient: it’s a horror story that works less on the visceral impact of its visuals and special effects, but more on a level of creating an undeniably creepy and haunting mood to the proceedings.

Of course, all of the BODY SNATCHERS films were also compelling because they did what all great sci-fi works should do: they were intriguing socio-political parables of their respective times.  For Siegel’s 1956 original (as was the case with Finney’s book), film scholars rightfully assert that the film’s themes were an allegory for the loss of personal autonomy in the former USSR and a shameful indictment of McCarthyism paranoia that swept through America.  Kauffman’s remake also dealt with paranoia, albeit on different levels.  His film has been said to evoke the general malaise that America felt during the Vietnam/Watergate era of their history, reflecting the persuasive mistrust that swept through the cultural mindset.  Ferrera’s 1993 film could be aptly described as a scary mirror into the social calamities that were striking fear into the hearts of people around the world, like the AIDS epidemic.

Now comes the 2007 film version, which was directed by the more-than-competent Oliver Hirschbiegel, who made 2004’s DOWNFALL, a strong-headed and bold masterpiece about the final hours of Adolf Hitler.  Like the previous versions of the story, Hirschbiegel’s THE INVASION also deals with paranoia, but on a much more discrete level.  His film centers on the social, isolationist doctrine that has paralyzed many nations in the wake of 9/11.  It comments on the systemic mistrust of everything foreign that embeds our modern culture.  There are also some subtle philosophical points that it makes about the devastating impact that the recent flu epidemics have had, not to mention some commentary about the war in Iraq and our distrust of the current Bush administration.  As one of the alien infected humans explains to the film’s heroine at one point, would there be a war in Iraq if everyone was infected and living in cohabitation with one another? 

Hmmm…good point.

THE INVASION marginally succeeds as a cerebral and provocative scarefest that does an effective job of being taut and creepy, the latter two elements being absolutely necessary to adapting Finney’s novel.  By direct comparisons to the previous three remakes, THE INVASION is easily weakest of the lot, but if one overlooks relative comparisons to the other adaptations and views it as a stand-alone work, then Hirschbiegel has done a good job of crafting a fairly suspenseful, involving, and haunting thriller that creates a surprisingly level of forward momentum despite one’s overt familiarity with the underlining material.  It also succeeds on a performance level, and Nicole Kidman has the utterly thankless job of playing a very convincing victim amidst all of the chaos that ensues around her.  A lesser actress would have sank the story.  If anything, Kidman’s commanding performance brings a level of believability to the film.

The new film offers up a neat - if not bold - twist to how the aliens land on earth.  It appears that the space shuttle, while crash landing to earth, contained many alien spores than attached themselves to the ship.  As the ship’s remains blasted their way from Washington to Dallas, people that came in contact with pieces of the shuttle debris become immediately infected.  The fact that the film uses a real-life catastrophe, like the recent space shuttle disaster, may initially appear to be in poor taste, but it’s never dwelled on, nor exploited to nasty effect.

Tucker (Jermey Northam) works for the government in disease control and while inspecting part of the shuttle crash site, he becomes infected.  It seems that after the spores find a place in you, they really go to work on your system while you sleep.  As Tucker sleeps the night away, his visage metamorphoses into some sort of humanoid algae figure right out of an X-Men film.  When he awakens, he physically returns to normal, but something is definitely not normal about his personality.  He walks and talks like one of those soft spoken agents from THE MATRIX films.  In short, the aliens have remade humans to be oddly complacent, that is until they attempt to infect other humans to convert them.  The manner with which they do this is very, very icky: it’s all done through bodily fluids.  One gross moment shows alien infected waiters vomiting into coffee pots and then later serving the resulting liquid. 

I have now ripped up my frequent coffee card for Starbucks.

Dr. Carol Bennet (Nicole Kidman) is Tucker’s estranged wife that lives with her son, Oliver (Jackson Bond).  One day she discovers that one of her patient’s husband is displaying atypical behaviour, like killing the family dog without a care in the world.  Carol sees this as fishy too.  She has her own concerns, seeing as young Oliver is set for a trip to spend time with dear, old dad.  She’s more than a bit frustrated with the prospect of her son seeing her former husband, but her semi-platonic “best friend”, Ben (Daniel Craig, quite solid despite his limited supporting role) tells her not to worry too much.  Unfortunately, after Oliver hooks up with the infected dad, he text messages his mother by saying that his father is acting very…weird.

Meanwhile, the nation has quickly grown infected by the space disease (the government curiously masks it as yet another dangerous form of the flu pandemic).  Carol herself manages to find a nasty little remnant of the alien infected skin off of a cute little neighbourhood boy and takes it to her researcher friend, Dr. Galeano (Jeffrey Wright).  Of course, Galeano is one of those obligatorical movie doctors that is able to uncover, within no time, that the sample is actual alien in nature and is able to infer vast amount of information as to how the alien spores work on the human body (this is the least plausible part of the film).  Carol takes his words to heart, especially when she becomes infected after attempting to rescue her son from her infected husband.  After being vomited on in the face (yuck) by her former soul mate, she narrowly escapes him and goes on a desperate search for Oliver, who holds a vital – if a bit too convenient - key to the survival of mankind.  Galeano and a company of uninfected have set up a vast military disease control compound outside of city limits, so it becomes a desperate race against time for Carol to find her son and escape to the facility…all before she falls asleep and turns into one of those nasty pod people.

What I found most interesting about THE INVASION is how the main lead is a woman.  There could have been an incredible temptation to have Daniel Craig play the lead, but there is a nifty bit of gender reversal in the film; he essentially plays the love interest which is usually reserved for female lead.  I think that this creates an even heightened sense of vulnerability with the main character, especially considering the indescribable bond that a mother has with her child, not to mention the innate fear of her baby being turned into a docile alien.  Kidman’s performance is so crucial to this, and she plays Carol with the right level of dialled-in, emotional confusion that later rightfully erupts into hysteria.  Hirschbiegel compliments the performance by using a lot of odd camera angles, embellishing the textural claustrophobia of the environment of the film.  THE INVASION is thoroughly atmospheric as a result.

The film has some loopholes.  It concludes not with an ending but more of an abrupt stoppage, which leaves viewers asking for more.  Also, there are some perfunctory plot elements, like the fact that you know – you just know – that the only man Carol can trust in the world, Ben, will eventually be infected and try to infect her.  Then there is the notable and highly publicized re-shoot that the film underwent as a result of the Warner Brothers brass disliking of most of Hirschbiegel footage.  They hired the Wachowski Brothers to re-write new footage and a new ending and got V FOR VENDETTA director James McTeigue to direct the footage with an extra budget of $10 million.  Originally supposed to be released in early 2006, the re-shoots pushed the film’s release to this year.  How much of Hirschbiegel’s footage remains in this version is a regrettable mystery, but the odd inclusion of the stylistically opposite Wachowskis and McTeigue is not the red herring of the film that many critics have pained to point out.  Their inclusions are obvious (especially in the action scenes), but they more or less compliment what Hirschbiegel contributed and are not the overt distraction that I feared they would be.

THE INVASION is an odd cinematic creature: a forth in the line of movie remakes that cannibalises some of the elements of the previous versions and, in turn, was directed by not one, but a  series of filmmakers, one of whom never received official credit.  Initial impulses would be the label THE INVASION, as a result of its divergent creative minds and its regurgitated story, as a misguided appropriation of a classic sci-fi novel and series of films.  Yet, cohesiveness is not what the film lacks, as it generates a genuine level of interest in its story and is able to forge a rooting interest in its main heroine.  As a scary sci-fi parable, it’s not in the same league as the 1956 original, nor its 1979 remake, nor its 1993 remake, but THE INVASION still manages some allegorical commentary that reflects our current climate of geo-political uncertainty and confusion.  The direction is also fairly tight and tense, and Kidman gives, as described, a thanklessly believable performance.  Surely, THE INVASION seems like another unnecessary and redundant remake that has some decided faults.  Yet, as a whole, it holds together fairly well and creates a legitimate sensation of dread, which is what a good, passably entertaining thriller should do.

www.craigerscinemacorner.com

***1/2  out of  **** 

It has been said that SUPERBAD is based on a screenplay that Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg began writing when they were 13-years-old.  Exactly how much of their script is entirely true-to-life is questionable, but what is not disputable is that the film is an unapologetic raunch-filled, potty mouth laced, adolescent hormone induced, R-rated laugh riot.

SUPERBAD is not only foul mouthed; it’s remarkably foul mouthed, almost as if it was competing in some sort of lewd spectator sport.  According to a September 2007 Maxim Magazine article (which, to my astonishment, has more than just nice pictures), everyone’s favourite four-letter curse word is uttered 186 times during the film’s 114 minutes.  SUPERBAD is not a film for kids; its very, very appropriately rated R for (let me stretch my knuckles and fingers before I type this): “Pervasive crude and sexual content, strong language, drinking, some drug use and a fantasy/comic violent image, all involving teens.” 

And for that…I say…thank-you.

The film is in the great tradition of other adult rated odysseys of scatological debauchery and excess (like NATIONAL LAMPOON’S ANIMAL HOUSE and DAZED IN CONFUSED).  However, as was the case with the latter film mentioned, it also does what all great teen sex comedies do:  It makes us care about its characters, whom are oftentimes misguided and woefully naïve teen losers on the fringes of their social gene pool.  The trio of teens in SUPERBAD – played in unison by three of the truly funniest performances of the year by Jonah Hill, Michael Cera, and an wonderful new find, Christopher Mintz-Plasse – speak in a shocking barrage of sickening usages of the most naughty of words, often combined with X-rated descriptions of the male and female sex organs and their cohabitation together.  Yet, there is an undeniable sweetness and innate likeability to these adolescent degenerates.  Sure, they deserve to have their collective mouths washed out with soap for all of eternity, but, deep down, they really are decent chaps that genuinely care about friendship.

Oh…and getting laid and drunk.

Conservative minds that are too quick to label SUPERBAD as ill tempered and shamefully odious because of its acid-tongued dialogue kind of overlook the meaning behind the content.   Yes, these young boys speak like longshoremen, but the characters’ colorful and shockingly verbose use of terms and words oftentimes reflects the gullibility and ignorance of their youth.  The film is clever in its pornographic conversations; actually, it’s downright lyrical and intelligent with its dialogue at times (imagine Mamet writing teen conversations and you have the idea) to the point where you don’t really chastise it, but kind of sickly admire it for its timing and rhythm.  One key truism of male life is that men, for the most part, don’t understand what women think or what they want.  Teen boys, to a larger degree, really don’t know what the hell women are about.  The notion that the kids in SUPERBAD refer to woman as things to be ogled at and to fulfill their twisted masturbatory fantasies seems inevitably normal to me.  After all, when your a young man graduating from high school, are high on life, have boundless energy, and desperately do not wish to go to college a mournful, sexual novice (gasp!), then how else would you see women?

SUPERBAD understands this perfectly.  It wisely understands the complete ignorance that its hapless saps have towards girls, but it also rightfully displays how deep yearning and insatiable lust can – in the long run- change who you are and how you view people.  The film accurately puts the sexually-angst-ridden male ego on display and shows its teens wanting sex so badly that -  when they actually are faced with approaching a girl and talking to them - they become hopeless amateurs.  These guys are so indescribably horny that their primeval impulses override their brains.  One kid wants sex, but is so overcome with awkwardness and shyness when approaching the girl of his dreams that he can’t even notice – when a blind man could see it – that the girl is smitten with him.

I think that this is the key to why SUPERBAD is such a success.  All great teen sex comedies had believable youth figures that were not just redundant and poorly drawn caricatures imported in to the screenplay for cheap, puerile laughs.  Like the best recent comedies, like THE 40-YEAR-OLD VIRGIN and KNOCKED UP (both directed by SUPERBAD’S producer, Judd Apatow, and the latter co-written by Seth Rogen), this film understands that the best way to counterbalance debauchery and rambunctiously crude material is with a nice undercurrent of charm and sincerity with its characters.  Sure, the kids in SUPERBAD act like they want to get hammered and laid as much as possible, but deep down they are flawed, vulnerable, and sensitive creatures that come to love and respect their interdependency with one another.  Scoring with chicks comes and goes, but true friendship is hard to come by.

Like DAZED AND CONFUSED and AMERICAN GRAFFITI – two of the best films about teens of their time – SUPERBAD follows the exploits of sex-starved teens over the course of one wild night.  The plot seems a bit routine and straightforward, but that should not be seen as a hindrance; the film works more of the levels of character interplay and chemistry.  We are quickly introduced to three high school misfits, the kind of outsiders that jocks seem to take great pain to step all over (in one cruel scene, a jock invites one of them out to his party by spitting right on him).  There’s Evan (perfectly channeling a type of Ben Stiller-esque social awkwardness and tepidness by the very funny Michael Cera), Seth (Jonah Hill, who kind of reminds me of a teen Chris Penn), and Fogell (played to screechy and shrill voiced greatness by Christopher Mintz-Plasse, a real life high school teen before he got this part at an open casting call).  They all are foils to one another: Evan is shy and mild-mannered around girls; Seth is an overweight slob and incessant motor mouth that thinks that the only way a boy of his stature will score with a girl is to get her drunk; and Fogell is a nerd of Level 10, Napoleon Dynamite geekiness that thinks he’s “with-it” when he is actually a major doofus.

Actually, Fogell is so blind with how socially inept and inexperienced he is that when he even tries to get a fake I.D., it’s an such an atrocious bit of fakery that no one with a head of their shoulders would take it for real.  The reveal of the ID is one of the film’s most hilarious moments.  Not only is it from the state of Hawaii, but it also lists his year of birth at 1981, making him 25 (he looks like he’s 15).  The icing on the cake is his name, or lack of a last one.  In what is sure to become a classic, iconic pop culture reference, his fake name is “McLovin”…period.  When looking at the grossly counterfeit card, Evan humorously deadpans, “The guys either going think ‘here’s another guy with a fake ID’, or ‘here’s McLovin, 25 year old Hawaiian organ donor’.”  Being absolutely desperate, Evan and Seth place their night in the hands of McLovin, seeing as they promised two cute girls that they would have no problem buying their favourite alcoholic drinks for a party.  Seth has his eyes set for Jules (Emma Stone) and Evan is after Becca (Martha MacIsaac) and they think that they key to their hearts is a bottle of GoldSlick.

Amazingly, Fogell’s I.D. fools the off-sale clerk, and just when he’s about to get the goods, he is punched to the ground by an armed robber.  The cops show up, and Evan and Seth mistakenly think that their buddy has been busted and flee.   The officers that come to the scene are Slater (SNL’s Bill Hader) and Michaels (co-writer himself, Seth Rogen).  Of course, Fogell is scared you-know-what-less by the boys in blue.  Yet, he’s surprised to find that these cops are probably the most lenient and non-law-abiding ones ever to appear in a mainstream film.  Not only do they eventually take Fogell to cruise with them on the beat, but they also involve him in an arrest at a bar, a night of binge drinking while on duty, the hitting of a pedestrian while intoxicated in the police car, and the eventual destruction of said car with a Molotov cocktail.  The funny angle with Fogell and the two cops is that they don’t make life difficult for the legally underage teen; when they meet him they take a liking to him.  They see in him what they were like when they were his age: a teen that naturally distrusts and hates cops.  As a result, their night is all about them showing Fogell that – gee whiz – cops like to party too.

Evan and Seth do end up at the party with the two girls, but only after a series of horrible misadventures which involves Evan being hit not once, but twice with a car, secretly stashing stolen beer in laundry detergent bottles, and having a girl at another party leave a particular bodily fluid on his pants while dancing that occurs at her “time” of the month.  I won’t spoil any more of the film and what happens at the climatic party, but let’s just say that – when all of their shenanigans are over and done with – the boys learn some truths about who they are and what being true friends is all about.  They also gain the wisdom that a girl that digs you will not have to be bribed with a shooter.

SUPERBAD achieves high comedic plateaus when dealing with its young men at crucibles in their lives.  Surely, the plot could have been fodder for yet another dumb and juvenile teen comedy.  Yet, the film is not as lewd as other past comedies (there’s ample bad language, but the gross out gags are more subtle, and nudity is all but vacant, outside of a montage of riotously funny renderings of the male appendage done by Evan as a young boy).  No, the real heart of the film is that it has one.  The reason SUPERBAD resonates so strongly is because you can understand and relate to these misfits and their issues.  When Seth and Evan have a heated argument about their future, you sense real pain and resentment in their words.  In an age where teens are cardboard cutouts and two dimensional, SUPERBAD creates a real verisimilitude in its troubled youth.  It is also greatly aided by the fact that its three main teens actually look like teens.  This is one of the first films in a long while that had the intelligence and foresight to not cast actors in their late 20’s to play high school graduates.  That choice would have wrecked the film’s effect.  Since we buy into the actors in the film, we more intently buy into them as characters.

If the film has a few faults then it would be in its length (it runs about 10-15 minutes longer for its own good) and for the cop characters (however funny Hader and Rogen are as the bumbling, beer-drinking, and chain smoking cops with no level of adult authority, they seem a bit out of touch with the tone of the rest of the film around them).  They certainly would occupy a great screwball farce, but here they seem like an odd fit to the reality-based atmosphere the other characters occupy.  Nevertheless, SUPERBAD is a great achievement in the teen sex comedy genre, one that is oh-so-hard to pull off successfully.  Here’s a film that, upon a cursory look at it, is about young horny boys that want to get plastered, nail women, and go to college as experienced sex machines.  Yet, underneath that all is a subtle depiction of the misery and nagging uncertainty that the teens have with themselves and the future.  Like THE 40-YEAR-OLD VIRGIN and KNOCKED UP, SUPERBAD is a super-lewd and crude endurance test of raunch and sleaze, but it also has something genuine and earnest to say about its characters and their predicament.  It simply is one of the best comedies of the summer.

And for that…I McLoved it.

www.craigerscinemacorner.com

***  out of  ****

Danny Boyle’s SUNSHINE is like ARMAGEDDON for viewers with actual brains in their heads.  A cursory look at the two films will net some clear-cut similarities:  A mission deep into space involving a nuclear payload; a rag-tag group of astronauts that don’t always see eye to eye on the mission; a terrible cosmic event that spells doom for all of mankind back on earth, and so forth. 

Yet, what chiefly separates the two films is their tone and approach.  SUNSHINE works as an effective homage to the types of intellectually stimulating sci-fi that are compelling less by the action and visual effects that it throws at us and more by its character dynamics, themes, and overall mood they generate.  For a film about a futuristic mission that involves taking a nuke the size of Manhattan Island to the sun in hopes of re-igniting it to save the earth, SUNSHINE has very little action, per se, in it.  Rather, its key assets are the way it creates an ever-escalating sense of claustrophobia and dread throughout its running time, not to mention commenting on the gigantic implications of the mission involved.  From a premise perspective, SUNSHINE is intriguing and unique.  Whereas other sci-fi thrillers about deep space usually involve planets and aliens, SUNSHINE is predominantly about “fixing” the sun, a sort of silent, omnipotent antagonist.  Without it, the entire planet would face an eternity of Saskatchewan winters.  That’s really scary.

Watching the film, you keenly sense where Boyle is going with the material.  Being one of the more fearless and ambitious directors working today (his resume demonstrates that he is not intimidated by approaching different genres, as 28 DAYS LATER, MILLIONS, and TRAINSPOTTING demonstrate), Boyle seems inspired by a combination of elements from other great sci-fi films.  The metaphysical themes are right out of 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY, as are some of the film’s hauntingly beautiful images (a scene involving a pod bay door and crew members attempting to re-board a ship without space suits is also familiar).  There are also clear cut echoes to other ethereal films, like Andrei Tarkovsky’s SOLARIS, and the level of tightly confined, muggy, and claustrophobic space quarters seem inspired by Wolfgang Peterson’s DAS BOOT.  The final act of the film borrows heavily from ALIEN in many respects and, ironically, from Boyles own 28 DAYS LATER. 

The later influences are what works the least successfully in SUNSHINE.  During the film’s last act, there is a sharp – well, razor sharp – change in pace and tone, almost too much if one considers everything that the film builds to.  There is no denying that Boyle is gifted at crafting teeth-clenching levels of suspense and horror, and the final moments of SUNSHINE are superbly created and are genuinely frightening.  Yet, they kind of betray what a great film that it was leading into the last 30 minutes.  It has been said that Boyle and writer Alex Garland (who both collaborated with one another for 28 DAYS LATER and THE BEACH) went through 35 drafts before filming SUNSHINE.  It’s too bad that they did not realize during those 35 chances that the story’s plot twist and conclusion is odd and unsatisfying.

No matter.  Boyle does such an assured job here of balancing the film’s spiritual and inter-planetary issues alongside generating good performances from his lead actors.  That is not to say that he does not do an exemplary job with the film’s visuals.  Boyle correctly captures the vastness of space and counterbalances that with the confined environment that his characters live in on the space ship.  Many other similar films cut back and forth from the crew and their mission in space to needless sub-plots of worried loved ones back on earth.  Boyle resists the temptation to ever show scenes on earth, with the exception of one final moment.  Constantly making transitions from the bleakness of space and the sheer magnitude of the sun’s visage to scenes of normalcy on earth would have ruined the film’s aesthetic impact.  Like Ridley Scott’s ALIEN, he keeps his attention on space and the crew, which only amplifies the tension and intrigue.  By doing so, Boyle can also hone his focus on the relationships of the characters and how they, in turn, are at the complete mercy of their seemingly suicidal mission.

The film takes place in 2057 where we learn – with the aid of the ever-resourceful voice over - that the Sun is dying.  Wait a tick!  I was always lead to believe in all of my high school science classes that it would take a lot longer than 50 years for the Sun to perish.  Like…try billions of years (trust me; I looked it up just to be sure).  However, the film is not so much about the Sun dying as it is about it having a nasty infection that needs curing.  Logging on to various websites confirms this.  According to the film’s scientific advisory, the Sun in SUNSHINE’s future is infected with a “Q-ball”, or a “supersymmetric nucleus”, presumably left over from the big bang, which has disrupted its normal matter.  Now, in order to blast the Q-ball back to its constituent parts and returning the Sun back to normal, you would need a bomb…say…the mass of the moon.  Since a ship with a payload the mass of the moon would be inane, the filmmakers have decided on one the size of Manhattan.  Okay, so they took dramatic liberties…but it works for me.

The ship itself – wonderfully realized with state-of-the-art visual effects – is kind of like 2001’s Discovery ship stuck on a gigantic heat shield.  Imagine a pin (the ship) placed head first on the center of a Frisbee (the heat shield) and you kind of get the idea as to size and scale.  Of course, tension runs high for the ship’s (the Icarus II) crew, comprised of Captain Kaneda (Hiroyuki Sanada), his first officer is Harvey (Troy Garity), Capa (Cillian Murphy), Cassie (Rose Byrne), Corazon (Michelle Yeoh), Mace (Chris Evans), Searle (Cliff Curtis), and Trey (Benedict Wong).  Arguably, it is Capa that seems like the one most needed member on board, as it is he that manages the ship’s massive payload that will be used to detonate on the Sun to assist with its re-birth.  Of course, this drives a few of the other members crazy.  After all, who can truly be labeled as the most crucial on what is easily seen as a mission with a passable chance of never returning home.

That notion gnaws away at these space voyagers.  They all know, deep down, that they are eight people collectively that could save the earth.  Not only that, but there is also that nagging nightmare of the fate of the original Icarus (remember, they are on ship number II), which failed on their mission seven years earlier.  To make their situation seem even direr, all of the fissile material on earth was mined for the second mission, which means that if they fail, then the world is screwed royal.  Tensions particularly run high when, after 16 months in space, the ship passes a zone where no more communication with earth is possible.  The crew leaves their final messages – and potential good-byes – to their loved ones back home.  Capa’s message to his family is especially cryptic and poignant: “So, if you wake up one morning and it’s a particularly beautiful day, you’ll know we made it.”

While the ship passes around the dark side of Mercury, something startling happens: they hear an actual distress call from the original Icarus.  This then places the crew of ship II into a real dilemma.  Should they continue on with the mission and forget about the Icarus I crew to detonate the bomb on the Sun or should they go to the stranded vessel and look for survivors?  Clear-headed pragmatism would dictate that checking for anyone alive on a ship that has not been heard of for seven years would be stupid, and most of the crew acknowledges it.  Unfortunately for Capa, the ships Captain asks him to make to choice as to whether they rendezvous with the doomed vessel, seeing as that ship may have another usable payload.  Upon engaging in a highly stressful bit of risk assessment, Capa begrudgingly decides that “two last hopes are better than one,” and realizes that salvaging another payload would be a good idea.

The crew then docks with the apparently lifeless Icarus I, and from the point of proceeding on board to the film’s final act, SUNSHINE goes in some decidedly peculiar and unproductive directions.  I will try my best not to spoil anything that happens, but let’s just say that the Icarus II crew “discovers” something and that something proceeds to make it aboard their ship and starts to kill the crew members one at a time, not to mention that it apparently has a deep desire to sabotage the entire mission.  Mixed in with this ALIEN-esque action third act is some very confusing pontificating about the nature of God and man, which never really seems to be deciphered clearly by the screenplay or by Boyle’s direction.  Make no mistake about it, Boyle is an undisputed master at making SUNSHINE’S final moments creepy and authoritative, but they just seem completely out of left field here.

Although I loathed the film’s journey towards a conclusion, I found myself having great affection for everything that preceded it.  There are many moments in the film that garner legitimate awe and wonder, as is the case with one near fatal space walk that is dangerously close to the sun.  I also loved how Boyle makes space eerie and something to be simultaneously fearful and beautiful (one character seems addicted to looking at the sun through gigantic tinted view screens so much that he will surely need mass amounts of Aloe Vera gel to mend his flakey skin if he returns home).  Some of the vistas that Boyle places the gargantuan space ship against have a supernatural and foreboding magnificence to them.  The characters, along with the film’s aesthetic look, also lend to the film’s overall effectiveness.  The performances are genuinely strong and reflect the crew’s growing apprehension with their mission and with each other.  Ultimately, the film is deeply humanistic despite the sheer scope and brevity of the space mission.  What’s great about the film is that it embodies more emotional life in a genre that typically is all about action and spectacle.

I guess that is what I will take most out of SUNSHINE: it’s a tense, taut, and compelling thinking-mans sci-fi thriller that focuses on characters and human interaction first and lets the visuals and special effects linger in the background.  A film like this does not need space battles, dastardly villains, and alien life forms to intrigue audiences.  Instead, it commands respect by the way it generates such an irrefutable sense of dread and suspense with its proceedings.  SUNSHINE is an immersing sci-fi film of great power and grandeur; many of its images will remain with me and, on an emotional level, it stirs a natural sense of amazement and wonder.  It’s a frequently mesmerizing work - playing off of horror and thriller beats - that shows Boyle’s command over a very challenging genre of thoughtful and introspective sci-fi.  Now, if he only gave the script re-write number 36 and got rid of that needlessly head-shaking third act, then maybe SUNSHINE would have achieved a level of greatness.  What we are left with is a work that is challenging, memorable, thrilling, and frustrating to sit through.  I mean, you would at least think that the film would be smart enough to follow one cardinal rule that that past sci-fi films have established:

If you’re on a deep space mission and receive a distress call that could impede your ability to save human civilization, then don’t investigate it…for the love of God!

www.craigerscinemacorner.com

***  out of  ****

Danny Boyle’s SUNSHINE is like ARMAGEDDON for viewers with actual brains in their heads.  A cursory look at the two films will net some clear-cut similarities:  A mission deep into space involving a nuclear payload; a rag-tag group of astronauts that don’t always see eye to eye on the mission; a terrible cosmic event that spells doom for all of mankind back on earth, and so forth. 

Yet, what chiefly separates the two films is their tone and approach.  SUNSHINE works as an effective homage to the types of intellectually stimulating sci-fi that are compelling less by the action and visual effects that it throws at us and more by its character dynamics, themes, and overall mood they generate.  For a film about a futuristic mission that involves taking a nuke the size of Manhattan Island to the sun in hopes of re-igniting it to save the earth, SUNSHINE has very little action, per se, in it.  Rather, its key assets are the way it creates an ever-escalating sense of claustrophobia and dread throughout its running time, not to mention commenting on the gigantic implications of the mission involved.  From a premise perspective, SUNSHINE is intriguing and unique.  Whereas other sci-fi thrillers about deep space usually involve planets and aliens, SUNSHINE is predominantly about “fixing” the sun, a sort of silent, omnipotent antagonist.  Without it, the entire planet would face an eternity of Saskatchewan winters.  That’s really scary.

Watching the film, you keenly sense where Boyle is going with the material.  Being one of the more fearless and ambitious directors working today (his resume demonstrates that he is not intimidated by approaching different genres, as 28 DAYS LATER, MILLIONS, and TRAINSPOTTING demonstrate), Boyle seems inspired by a combination of elements from other great sci-fi films.  The metaphysical themes are right out of 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY, as are some of the film’s hauntingly beautiful images (a scene involving a pod bay door and crew members attempting to re-board a ship without space suits is also familiar).  There are also clear cut echoes to other ethereal films, like Andrei Tarkovsky’s SOLARIS, and the level of tightly confined, muggy, and claustrophobic space quarters seem inspired by Wolfgang Peterson’s DAS BOOT.  The final act of the film borrows heavily from ALIEN in many respects and, ironically, from Boyles own 28 DAYS LATER. 

The later influences are what works the least successfully in SUNSHINE.  During the film’s last act, there is a sharp – well, razor sharp – change in pace and tone, almost too much if one considers everything that the film builds to.  There is no denying that Boyle is gifted at crafting teeth-clenching levels of suspense and horror, and the final moments of SUNSHINE are superbly created and are genuinely frightening.  Yet, they kind of betray what a great film that it was leading into the last 30 minutes.  It has been said that Boyle and writer Alex Garland (who both collaborated with one another for 28 DAYS LATER and THE BEACH) went through 35 drafts before filming SUNSHINE.  It’s too bad that they did not realize during those 35 chances that the story’s plot twist and conclusion is odd and unsatisfying.

No matter.  Boyle does such an assured job here of balancing the film’s spiritual and inter-planetary issues alongside generating good performances from his lead actors.  That is not to say that he does not do an exemplary job with the film’s visuals.  Boyle correctly captures the vastness of space and counterbalances that with the confined environment that his characters live in on the space ship.  Many other similar films cut back and forth from the crew and their mission in space to needless sub-plots of worried loved ones back on earth.  Boyle resists the temptation to ever show scenes on earth, with the exception of one final moment.  Constantly making transitions from the bleakness of space and the sheer magnitude of the sun’s visage to scenes of normalcy on earth would have ruined the film’s aesthetic impact.  Like Ridley Scott’s ALIEN, he keeps his attention on space and the crew, which only amplifies the tension and intrigue.  By doing so, Boyle can also hone his focus on the relationships of the characters and how they, in turn, are at the complete mercy of their seemingly suicidal mission.

The film takes place in 2057 where we learn – with the aid of the ever-resourceful voice over - that the Sun is dying.  Wait a tick!  I was always lead to believe in all of my high school science classes that it would take a lot longer than 50 years for the Sun to perish.  Like…try billions of years (trust me; I looked it up just to be sure).  However, the film is not so much about the Sun dying as it is about it having a nasty infection that needs curing.  Logging on to various websites confirms this.  According to the film’s scientific advisory, the Sun in SUNSHINE’s future is infected with a “Q-ball”, or a “supersymmetric nucleus”, presumably left over from the big bang, which has disrupted its normal matter.  Now, in order to blast the Q-ball back to its constituent parts and returning the Sun back to normal, you would need a bomb…say…the mass of the moon.  Since a ship with a payload the mass of the moon would be inane, the filmmakers have decided on one the size of Manhattan.  Okay, so they took dramatic liberties…but it works for me.

The ship itself – wonderfully realized with state-of-the-art visual effects – is kind of like 2001’s Discovery ship stuck on a gigantic heat shield.  Imagine a pin (the ship) placed head first on the center of a Frisbee (the heat shield) and you kind of get the idea as to size and scale.  Of course, tension runs high for the ship’s (the Icarus II) crew, comprised of Captain Kaneda (Hiroyuki Sanada), his first officer is Harvey (Troy Garity), Capa (Cillian Murphy), Cassie (Rose Byrne), Corazon (Michelle Yeoh), Mace (Chris Evans), Searle (Cliff Curtis), and Trey (Benedict Wong).  Arguably, it is Capa that seems like the one most needed member on board, as it is he that manages the ship’s massive payload that will be used to detonate on the Sun to assist with its re-birth.  Of course, this drives a few of the other members crazy.  After all, who can truly be labeled as the most crucial on what is easily seen as a mission with a passable chance of never returning home.

That notion gnaws away at these space voyagers.  They all know, deep down, that they are eight people collectively that could save the earth.  Not only that, but there is also that nagging nightmare of the fate of the original Icarus (remember, they are on ship number II), which failed on their mission seven years earlier.  To make their situation seem even direr, all of the fissile material on earth was mined for the second mission, which means that if they fail, then the world is screwed royal.  Tensions particularly run high when, after 16 months in space, the ship passes a zone where no more communication with earth is possible.  The crew leaves their final messages – and potential good-byes – to their loved ones back home.  Capa’s message to his family is especially cryptic and poignant: “So, if you wake up one morning and it’s a particularly beautiful day, you’ll know we made it.”

While the ship passes around the dark side of Mercury, something startling happens: they hear an actual distress call from the original Icarus.  This then places the crew of ship II into a real dilemma.  Should they continue on with the mission and forget about the Icarus I crew to detonate the bomb on the Sun or should they go to the stranded vessel and look for survivors?  Clear-headed pragmatism would dictate that checking for anyone alive on a ship that has not been heard of for seven years would be stupid, and most of the crew acknowledges it.  Unfortunately for Capa, the ships Captain asks him to make to choice as to whether they rendezvous with the doomed vessel, seeing as that ship may have another usable payload.  Upon engaging in a highly stressful bit of risk assessment, Capa begrudgingly decides that “two last hopes are better than one,” and realizes that salvaging another payload would be a good idea.

The crew then docks with the apparently lifeless Icarus I, and from the point of proceeding on board to the film’s final act, SUNSHINE goes in some decidedly peculiar and unproductive directions.  I will try my best not to spoil anything that happens, but let’s just say that the Icarus II crew “discovers” something and that something proceeds to make it aboard their ship and starts to kill the crew members one at a time, not to mention that it apparently has a deep desire to sabotage the entire mission.  Mixed in with this ALIEN-esque action third act is some very confusing pontificating about the nature of God and man, which never really seems to be deciphered clearly by the screenplay or by Boyle’s direction.  Make no mistake about it, Boyle is an undisputed master at making SUNSHINE’S final moments creepy and authoritative, but they just seem completely out of left field here.

Although I loathed the film’s journey towards a conclusion, I found myself having great affection for everything that preceded it.  There are many moments in the film that garner legitimate awe and wonder, as is the case with one near fatal space walk that is dangerously close to the sun.  I also loved how Boyle makes space eerie and something to be simultaneously fearful and beautiful (one character seems addicted to looking at the sun through gigantic tinted view screens so much that he will surely need mass amounts of Aloe Vera gel to mend his flakey skin if he returns home).  Some of the vistas that Boyle places the gargantuan space ship against have a supernatural and foreboding magnificence to them.  The characters, along with the film’s aesthetic look, also lend to the film’s overall effectiveness.  The performances are genuinely strong and reflect the crew’s growing apprehension with their mission and with each other.  Ultimately, the film is deeply humanistic despite the sheer scope and brevity of the space mission.  What’s great about the film is that it embodies more emotional life in a genre that typically is all about action and spectacle.

I guess that is what I will take most out of SUNSHINE: it’s a tense, taut, and compelling thinking-mans sci-fi thriller that focuses on characters and human interaction first and lets the visuals and special effects linger in the background.  A film like this does not need space battles, dastardly villains, and alien life forms to intrigue audiences.  Instead, it commands respect by the way it generates such an irrefutable sense of dread and suspense with its proceedings.  SUNSHINE is an immersing sci-fi film of great power and grandeur; many of its images will remain with me and, on an emotional level, it stirs a natural sense of amazement and wonder.  It’s a frequently mesmerizing work - playing off of horror and thriller beats - that shows Boyle’s command over a very challenging genre of thoughtful and introspective sci-fi.  Now, if he only gave the script re-write number 36 and got rid of that needlessly head-shaking third act, then maybe SUNSHINE would have achieved a level of greatness.  What we are left with is a work that is challenging, memorable, thrilling, and frustrating to sit through.  I mean, you would at least think that the film would be smart enough to follow one cardinal rule that that past sci-fi films have established:

If you’re on a deep space mission and receive a distress call that could impede your ability to save human civilization, then don’t investigate it…for the love of God!

www.craigerscinemacorner.com

** out of ****

Apparently director Matthew Vaughn (LAYER CAKE) pitched his proposed adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s 1998 illustrated novel, STARDUST, as THE PRINCESS BRIDE meets PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN. I would also hasten to add that the film also appears to have several regurgitated elements from countless other whimsical fantasies. I think what is crucial for this genre is the right combination of originality and imagination. The best fantasies should inspire endless wonder in their viewers to the point where one does feel whisked away to another time and place. Unfortunately, the only thing that STARDUST ultimately inspires is petty boredom. 

The film certainly has its heart in the right place; it tells a simple and kind-hearted story with black and white heroes and villains. Yet, the film’s overall tonality is wickedly all over the map. My main misgiving with this fantasy is not with its spirit and enthusiasm, but rather with its focus. It tries to be like THE PRINCESS BRIDE in terms of having a sly and self-deprecating sense of humor, yet it is hardly that film’s tongue-in-cheek match. On top of that, the film seems to forget the type of comedic romp that it wants to be throughout its running time. Overstuffed is an adjective that comes chiefly to mind when thinking about STARDUST. It never seems to really decide on (a) what it wants to be about and (b) the type of mood it hopes to achieve. Filled with wicked witches, dying kings, ancient prophecies, a spunky hero, and a magical land, STARDUST simply has too many ingredients vying for attention. Not only that, but its pacing is elephantine in nature; most good fantasies never aspire you to check your watch as feverously as this one does. 

The film attempts to have a nice and delicate balancing act between being a lighter-than average fairy tale with comedic elements alongside some decidedly darker narrative flourishes. There are moments that are over-the-top and ridiculous that coincide with some ghoulish instances of mild horror. I think that the reason for the success of THE PRINCESS BRIDE was in how it never went to appease too many stylistic sensibilities. That film was sweet and innocent and worked efficiently as a throwback to the types of fantasies that would be read to us as children at bedtime. STARDUST never really knows what its mood will be from scene to scene. It suffers from cinematic personality disorder as a result; coherence has been pushed to the background.

Perhaps even worse is the fact that the film never attains a level of out-of-body wonderment that far many other – and better – fantasies have achieved. The film’s visual palette is surprisingly sparse and limited, and its visual effects seem to lack the polish and sheen that other similar films have attained. Its immortally colorless hero, played in a bland and one-note performance by Charlie Cox, does not assist the film’s bland vibe, not to mention that we have to sit through a rather inconsistent English accent provided by Claire Danes (who looks like the victim of a very bad makeover) in the film’s other integral part. For these types of romantic-fuelled fantasies we desperately need the male and female figures to have chemistry and intrigue. Danes and Cox have very little, and this is only compounded by Cox’s considerable lack of charisma. 

Thankfully, the film is saved in the performance realm by Michelle Pfeiffer, who once again plays opposite of type to portray a dastardly villain (she did the same – to much better effect – in HAIRSPRAY). The other performance worth mentioning is by Robert De Niro, who plays a pirate…that is also a closeted transvestite. Whereas Johnny Depp’s Captain Jack Sparrow was foppishly effeminate, De Niro’s swashbuckler has a more in-your-face homoeroticism. Outwardly, he’s a cast iron SOB with a violent streak. Inwardly, he has an appreciation for fine dresses, trendy hairstyles, and good high heel shoes. De Niro, who has made a career