21
At the center of the story is Ben Campbell (Jim Sturgess from Across the Universe and The Other Boleyn Girl), a gifted young man with dreams of going to Harvard Medical School. He has the recommendations, the grade point average, and the skills to be accepted. What he doesn't have is the $300,000 fee required to go there. There is a scholarship that could get him a free ride into the school, but his chances there are looking faint. With student loans apparently not existing in whatever world this movie takes place in, Ben is getting desperate, and the $8 an hour he makes as assistant manager at a men's clothing store isn't cutting it. That's when one of his Professors at MIT, Micky Rosa (Kevin Spacey), happens to notice Ben's talent for logical thinking under pressure and skill with mathematics. He introduces Ben to a secret group he's organizing after hours on campus where some of Ben's fellow students and him take trips to Vegas every weekend, and make out like bandits using a complex system of secret code words, counting cards, and fake identities so that they don't get caught. Ben is hesitant at first, but his desire for money, and even stronger desire for one of the women in Professor Rosa's Vegas group named Jill Taylor (Kate Bosworth) draws him in. Ben's initial plan is to raise the money he needs for Harvard, then get out. But the party lifestyle of Vegas and the allure of money draws him in to the point that he forgets about everything. This not only costs him his friends back home at college, whom he starts to ignore, but he also starts to arouse suspicion with the head of security at one of the casinos Ben's group frequents - an old fashioned Vegas "thug" named Cole Williams (Laurence Fishburne).
Just looking over that synopsis almost fools me into thinking that 21 is a much more interesting movie than it actually is. There's certainly nothing wrong with the premise, it's the execution that makes everything come up short. This movie gives a muddied and blurred look not only into the lives of these people, but also the system they used to pull this scam off. The movie uses a lot of camera tricks and music video-style editing to depict their training, so we never get a real sense of just what the plan is, and how they put it together. The movie doesn't even seem that interested in the students themselves, as aside from Ben, we learn absolutely nothing about them. Are they in this group for the same reason as him, or is it just simple greed for them? They're a sketchy group at best, with only one of the students besides Ben having a character trait. The fact that this trait is that this other student is a klepto and likes to steal from his hotel rooms doesn't really help draw us in. Not even the relationship that slowly grows between Ben and Jill is very effective, because they have not been written as interesting people. They don't get many quiet moments together, and the one time they actually make love, the camera is more fixated on the Vegas backdrop outside the window behind them than on the two people we're supposed to be concentrating on. Part of this is because the movie is rated PG-13, so obviously we're not going to see much. And part of it is because director Robert Luketic (Legally Blonde, Monster-in-Law) seems more interested in the story's setting than the story itself.
After a lengthy introduction sequence informing us of Ben and his money problems that drags on far too long, the movie finally hits Vegas, and I expected things to start picking up. Strangely enough, the movie seems to become even more distracted. We get a lot of music video-style montages of Ben and his friends winning big, a lot of shots of the Vegas strip, and a lot of fancy product placements when they start spending their winnings. But, the story itself kind of spins its wheels and never really goes anywhere. Despite its best efforts, the movie is never really creates any tension. We know that Ben is being watched by Cole Williams, and we see fairly early on what he does to people he catches cheating, but the character of Cole is mainly used as a device rather than a character who creates genuine tension. Fishburne is a very powerful actor, and is more than capable of creating a sense of menace. If you need proof, just see his performance as Ike Turner in What's Love Got to Do With It. He's not menacing or very interesting here. He just stands in the shadows for most of his screen time, narrowing his eyes. The movie also tries to create tension with a subplot about one of Ben's fellow students in on the scam (Jacob Pitts) growing jealous of him when Ben becomes the head player in the group. The two characters never have a confrontation that we would expect, and the character is completely dropped by the halfway point, never to be seen or heard from again. It's almost as if rather than doing an adaptation of this amazing true story, the filmmakers used this as an excuse for an extended Vegas vacation, and decided to just film the actors jetting around the strip while they were there.
When it comes to the performances, only Jim Sturgess and Kevin Spacey stand out, as they're the only ones who get something that resembles character development. The story arc for Ben of going from a quiet and meek "brain", to a reckless high roller in Vegas who almost loses everything is very predictable, but Sturgess is able to give his performance enough humanity that he's interesting to watch, and has a screen presence that can carry the film. This is good, since he's literally in every scene of the film. As for Spacey, he brings the usual intensity that he always brings to his roles. He seems to be having fun, and it's a shame that the movie forces him to stay off camera for such a long period of time, so the movie can focus on his students goofing around in Vegas. As the main love interest of the story, Kate Bosworth is disappointingly dry and never generates any real screen presence, not even when she's sharing a scene alone with Sturgess. This not only makes their relationship hard to get behind, but it also makes her character come across as a dullard, slowing down the pace of the film whenever she's on screen. The remainder of the cast is frivolous, and hardly worth mentioning.
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Pegg plays Dennis, a 30-something loser who hasn't made much of his life, and works as a security guard at a womens' undergarments store. He lives alone in a shabby apartment, and spends most of his personal time arguing with his landlord (Harish Patel). We learn early on that things weren't always like this. Five years ago, Dennis was engaged to be married to the lovely Libby (Thandie Newton), who was pregnant with their child at the time. But, right before the ceremony, Dennis got scared and ran away. The wedding was called off, but he still keeps contact with Libby, and tries to spend as much time as he can with their young son, Jake (Matthew Fenton). Dennis has grown to realize the mistake he made that day, and has been trying to patch things up with his ex-fiance. Libby, on the other hand, is quite content to move on, and thinks she's found the right man with Whit (Hank Azaria), a successful businessman and athlete. Dennis is immediately threatened by this seemingly-perfect man who has walked into Libby's life, and when he finds out that Whit is planning to participate in an upcoming marathon run, Dennis becomes strongly determined to get in shape and run as well.
As the film's opening scene at the wedding informs us, Dennis is a man who has always run away from his responsibilities, and never finished what he started. The question the movie asks its audience is whether or not he can motivate himself to finish such a monumental task as running a marathon. It's a simple question, and Run, Fatboy, Run takes an appropriately light and breezy approach to it. Making his feature-length directorial debut, actor David Schwimmer finds the right tone here. There's a certain sweetness and innocence to the entire film that grew on me, even when Dennis is portrayed as far from a perfect man or father. He is lazy, irresponsible, and doesn't always make the best judgements. And yet, there was something about Pegg's performance that made me think that there is good in him, and he is fighting an internal battle between the person he is and the person he wants to be. He comes across as flawed, not terrible, so when he starts trying to better himself, I could get behind him. Disappointingly, most of the scenes of him bettering himself are reserved for music montages, but the movie does hit upon the right note during some of the later scenes when Dennis is talking with Jake, and realizes the mistakes he's made in his life up to this point.
According to behind the scenes reports, the movie was originally written by stand up comic and actor, Michael Ian Black, to be set in New York. When the script fell into Simon Pegg's hand, he retooled it, and changed the setting to London. The different writing styles of Black and Pegg do sometimes show in the film, such as when the movie dives into some inappropriately crude humor. A scene involving a giant blister on Dennis' foot after one of his runs would be more suited for an American Pie movie, rather than the sweet-natured romantic comedy this movie wants to be. Fortunately, this kind of thing doesn't happen very often, and the movie is able to mostly find a steady tone that works. There are even some quietly inventive moments, such as when Dennis hits "a wall" during his marathon run near the end, and doesn't know if he can continue. It's a simple moment, but I found it strangely inspiring. On the whole, the screenplay is pretty conventional, and I highly doubt that there's a moment the audience will not be able to see coming before the characters do. Fortunately, the cast is spirited and charming enough to carry the material throughout.
Even if this is a different kind of role for Pegg than most American audiences are used to seeing him in, he still comes across as being likable. The quiet moments that he shares both with his character's ex-fiance and son are honest and sweet, and made me think he'd be pretty good in somewhat of a more straight role than he's used to. As the main people in his life, Thandie Newton and Matthew Fenton don't have a lot to do, but they still manage to make the most of their light material every time they're on screen. The two actors who came across strongest to me, however, are Harish Patel (as the previously mentioned landlord) and Dylan Moran (who previously co-starred with Pegg in Shaun of the Dead) as Dennis' gambling-obsessed best friend. They get some of the bigger laughs in the film, and when they get behind Dennis and train him for the marathon, they create a good chemistry with each other. The closest thing to a weak link would probably be Hank Azaria, who never truly comes across as a villain except when the screenplay requires him to. He doesn't get enough screen time for us to truly hate him, and Azaria's performance is a bit too low key to get the right audience reaction the filmmakers want.
The abuser in this case is writer and director, Craig Mazin. He takes the familiar and unfortunate approach of taking a popular movie, doing an almost scene-for-scene remake of it, and then adds jokes around bodily fluids to the scenes, hoping we will laugh. We do not, but that doesn't stop Mazin from trying the same thing in every scene, and getting the same failed result. The popular movie being parodied this time around is 2002's Spider-Man. There are also some fleeting nods to other franchises such as X-Men, Fantastic Four, and 1989's Batman, but they're not worth mentioning. Very little in this movie is. The hero of the origin film, Peter Parker, has been replaced with Rick Riker (Drake Bell), a nerdy high school student who has his life turned around when he goes on a school trip to a local science lab, and is bitten by a genetically engineered dragonfly. Before that, though, he gets raped by every animal in the lab for the sole purpose that the movie needs a scene to stretch the boundaries of its PG-13 rating. The bite from said insect gives him super powers, and before long, he's fighting crime as the costumed avenger, Dragonfly.
What always strikes me as odd is that whenever a comedy directly spoofs a popular movie, they often wind up feeling longer than the film that inspired it. Superhero Movie is only 85 minutes long, but feels a lot longer due to the total dead-on-arrival vibe it carries. Spider-Man, on the other hand, ran for two hours, but had liveliness and energy to it that kept things moving. It doesn't help matters that much like this year's other spoof film, Meet the Spartans, the filmmakers here feel the need to drag the ending credits to ridiculous lengths by completely stopping them every once in a while with a good five minutes or so worth of deleted scenes and alternate takes on existing scenes. I sat through the entire end credits, hoping I'd discover some lost piece of treasure that wound up on the cutting room floor, but alas, the stuff they took out is just as bad as they stuff they left in. I don't know why they do this anyway. Do they somehow feel that stretching the film's length to over 90 minutes will miraculously make it a better film? I know if I was involved with this project, I wouldn't appreciate having to sit through an endless string of rejected material before my name came on the screen. Actually, if I was involved with this project, I'd be having a good long talk with my agent.
Stop-Loss is a movie that focuses on a lot of things, but doesn't focus enough on any of the issues it looks at. It's a movie about the war, it's a movie about soldiers coming home, it's a road trip movie, it's about failed relationships, it's about how hard it can be for a soldier to return to civilian life after spending so much time on the battlefield, it's about whether it's right or not if a soldier should go AWOL...I can picture a lot of these issues making a compelling movie, but the screenplay by Peirce and Mark Richard treat them as if they're pit stops on a highway. It's content to give us the bare essentials, then move on. The title stems from a military term that means a soldier is forced back into duty even though his or her time is up. That's what happens when Texas native, Brandon King (Ryan Phillippe), returns home. He's looking forward to getting back to a normal life now that his tour of duty is over, but he gets a nasty surprise when he finds out he's been stop-lost and will be heading back to Iraq at the end of the month. In a scene of great implausibility, he marches right over to his lieutenant colonel, and tells him to "f--- the President" when he finds out there's no way out of this forced return to duty. Brandon is then escorted out of the office by a pair of fellow soldiers, but he's just so angry, he punches them out, steals a jeep, and drives right off the base with no problem whatsoever.
Despite these brief flights of absurd fantasy, Stop-Loss takes itself pretty seriously. The rest of the film deals with Brandon on the run with a friend named Michelle (Abbie Cornish), who is engaged to another soldier named Steve (Channing Tatum from Step Up and She's the Man). Steve is still loyal to the military, and wonders what Brandon is doing deserting his duty. Most of all, he wonders why his fiance is helping him. I was wondering too. The movie notes in its dialogue that Michelle and Brandon have long been friends, but the movie doesn't really go much deeper into their relationship than that. First, Brandon and Michelle plan to drive to Washington D.C., and seek the help of a Senator who told Brandon he'd help him out if he ever needed it during his return ceremony. When that falls through, it looks like Brandon may have to cross the border. This lengthy mid-section with the two on the run is when the movie starts spinning its wheels. Not much happens while they're on the road, and some of their experiences, such as when Brandon has a violent run-in with some petty street crooks, seem somewhat forced and contrived. Worst of all, we never feel a real connection with any of the characters. Brandon seems less a real person, and rather a tool of the screenplay to represent its message. We learn little about him, so there's never as strong of a relationship between the audience and the character as there should be.
The movie routinely interrupts Brandon's story with the story of Steve and another soldier named Tommy (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) back in Texas. These characters are supposed to represent the ones who can't quite stop being soldiers, even when they're civilians. Steve can't see himself as being anything but a soldier, and seems to see Brandon going AWOL as a personal insult. Tommy, on the other hand, can't seem to handle life outside the military. Almost as soon as he's home, his relationship with the girl he was to marry falls apart, he turns to the bottle, and he spends his days shooting what were supposed to be wedding gifts, and breaking windows in drunken rages. The character of Tommy follows a predictable path that we can see coming from early on. Anyone paying attention should be able to figure out where his character will be when the end credits roll. The movie hits upon some interesting ideas for both of these subplots, but they're never developed as anything more than ideas. It doesn't dig deep enough to make them into real people, and their stories almost seem to be breezed over. (Steve's fiance leaving him seems to happen in less than five hours after him coming home from the war, with no real explanation given.)
What's frustrating is that there was obviously a lot of effort put into the film. The performances by all the leads are strong, and are only brought down by the fact that their characters aren't as fleshed out as they should be. The movie also hits upon some truthful moments in its dialogue. Apparently, director Peirce spent a lot of time researching and interviewing different military people about their war experiences, and it comes through in the raw and sometimes honest dialogue. The movie also has some individual scenes that work, such as when Brandon visits the family of a fallen friend while he is on the run, and another scene where he visits a wounded ally at a hospital. If the movie as a whole was more sure footed and had more of a center focus, they could have been even more effective. As it is, they come across as highlights in a movie that seems to meander along, hitting upon a good scene now and then. I wanted this movie to captivate and thrill me, but it just never seemed to get off the ground.
A funny thing happened as I was doing some on line research on this film. One of the people credited for the story is an "Edmond Dantes", which is actually a pen name for filmmaker John Hughes. Anyone who grew up in the 80s remembers John Hughes, and his teen focused comedies such as Sixteen Candles, The Breakfast Club, and Weird Science. Apparently, this is a project that's been lying around the studio since Hughes' height of success about 20 years ago. It was handed off to successful comedy filmmaker, Judd Apatow (Knocked Up), to produce, who in turn turned to screenwriters Seth Rogen (Superbad) and Kristofor Brown (TV's Beavis and Butthead) to punch up the material. If only Rogen and Brown had followed Hughes' style of semi-realistic teenagers with dialogue that was genuinely funny and clever. This movie doesn't know how teenagers act, and treats every adult character as if they had the I.Q.s of rocks.
The plot is a simple one that focuses on two lifelong best friends who make a lot of mistakes on their first day of high school. Scrawny Wade (Nate Hartley) and overweight Ryan (Troy Gentile from Nacho Libre) show up to school wearing the same shirts, and then they make the unwise decision to stand up for the school's main geek, Emmitt (David Dorfman, best known for playing Naomi Watts' son in The Ring films). This immediately puts them on the hit list of the two most sadistic bullies in school, Filkins (Alex Frost) and Ronnie (Josh Peck). Fearing for their lives, and getting no sympathy or support from any adult authority figure, the three kids place an on line ad for a personal bodyguard willing to work for under $100. The only one willing to accept their offer is a guy who goes by the name of Drillbit Taylor (Owen Wilson), a homeless beach bum who claims to have military training, and will teach the kids how to stand up against their tormentors. Of course, he has intentions of his own, as he plans to rob the kids blind behind their backs and use their money so he can go to Canada and start a new life. But, the more time he spends with them, he begins to like and respect them. Before anyone knows it, he's passing himself off as a substitute teacher so he can keep a constant watch over them. And in the world of this movie, passing yourself off as a teacher is as easy as walking through the front door with a suit and tie, and hanging out in the teacher's lounge.
Drillbit Taylor is a movie that doesn't just stretch the boundaries of believability. It mangles it, chops it into pieces, buries it in the ground, and then spits on its grave. The movie seems to know that a lot of its ideas are far-fetched, so it's forced to make most of the characters incredibly stupid in order for it to work. Take the whole substitute teacher thing I just mentioned. We never buy this subplot for a second, because we're supposed to believe that the Principal of the school and the entire staff will simply let anyone walk in off the street and start teaching, no questions asked. I know it's a comedy, and I'm not supposed to be questioning it, but with school security being what it is today, the movie is asking too much for its audience to buy such a lapse in logic. Further signs of idiocy on the part of the adult cast: No one believes the three kids when they try to tell them about the bullies, not even when the kids are chased down the street by the head bully's car, smashing mailboxes and running over people's lawns as he goes. The adults go on blissfully unaware, thinking that their tormentor is a Golden Boy for no reason. They have no reason to think the way they do, other than the movie would be over in about 10 minutes if anyone had half a brain. I started to feel sorry for the kids, not because of their bully problem, but because there was not a single semi-intelligent adult around them.
The kids themselves are not really written as geeks or nerds to begin with. They're written as broad characters and cliches, but not as individual characters. There's one kid that's too skinny and wears glasses, there's one kid who's fat, and then there's another kid who apparently is heavy into musical theater, as evidenced by the T-shirts he wears. We're supposed to fill in the blanks from there, since they spend most of their time arguing with each other and getting beat up, rather than getting memorable dialogue or creating characters. The movie never seems to fall upon a genuine reason for us to care about them. There is an attempt to humanize one of the main characters, concerning a subplot where young Wade tries to slowly get the attention of a girl at school (Valerie Tian from Juno), but their relationship never really goes anywhere, nor does the plot itself with the way the movie drops and picks it up at random. Not even the relationship that's supposed to build between Drillbit and the boys generates much emotion. A lot of this has to do with the fact that Owen Wilson's heart doesn't even seem to be in the material in the first place. Wilson's comic act is usually pretty quiet and laid back, but here, he seems so distanced from the material that he's practically not there. He is supposed to be a redemptive character who has a change of heart thanks to these kids putting their trust in him, and the relationship he starts with a teacher at school (Leslie Mann). The thing is, he still seemed like the same guy to me when the end credits rolled. I had to wonder what he had truly learned, other than how to scam an entire school into thinking he's a teacher.
It's been a few hours since my screening got out, and I'm still trying to figure out just who the movie was supposed to be focused on. Despite the title, a good part of the movie forces the kids to act on their own without Drillbit's aid. And when Drillbit takes center stage, his scenes seem to focus more on his personal relationship than with his time with the kids. This is a muddled and uncertain movie, and you have to wonder if the screenwriters were fighting a losing battle here. This is a movie that did not have a lot of heart or thought put into it. There's just an overall assembly line feel to this movie. The direction by Steven Brill (Without a Paddle, Little Nicky) is dull and pedestrian, and the jokes often wind up falling flat. All this, and I haven't even mentioned the film's severe and numerous switches in tone. The movie can go from a goofy farce, to a sentimental teen movie, to a ridiculously violent fight movie that glorifies violence in the span of five minutes. To say that the film is a total mess would be an understatement.
Jane and Ben are driving down one of those dark and eerie roads you only see in horror movies, when they suddenly hit the figure of a young woman that comes darting out into the middle of the street. The ensuing accident sends their car spiraling off the road, and the young couple are unconscious for the rest of the night. When they come to, there is no sign of the girl they hit, and despite Ben's insistence that it was probably just an animal or something, Jane is still troubled by the experience. They still try to go about their new lives together, and while Ben begins his magazine job, Jane starts wandering the streets of Tokyo, taking pictures. That's when she notices something strange. When her pictures come back, there's something strange about them. Sometimes, there's a white streak-like apparition that should not be there. Or sometimes, there's a ghostly image of a woman who also shouldn't be there, and bears a striking resemblance to the one they hit that night. A friend of Jane's named Seiko (Maya Hazen) happens to know someone who works at a ghost-themed magazine, and introduces her to the concept of spirit photography. Jane starts trying to gather clues of just who this mystery woman who keeps on appearing in her pictures could be, and what she wants with her. Ben tries his best to brush these fears off, but the fact that he keeps on seeing this menacing ghost woman everywhere makes it hard. Meanwhile, we the audience are left wondering how many more times we'll have to see this kind of movie.
Shutter is the third remake of an Asian horror film (the original hails from Thailand) in as many months, and it's really starting to wear me down. There are so many times we can see young Hollywood actors being menaced by gray-skinned Japanese ghosts before it loses the scare effect that the filmmakers intend. To be fair, this is probably one of the better Asian horror remakes that I've seen. Director Masayuki Ochiai (a Japanese filmmaker making his English language debut) does have a good sense of atmosphere, and is able to deliver an effective jolt or two. The movie is definitely better than January's One Missed Call, and more effective than February's The Eye. But the fact remains, we've seen it all before, and the movie does very little to set itself apart from the numerous imitators. The moments that are effective in delivering some genuine frights are unfortunately few and far between. The most effective moment is when Ben is alone in a set where a model photo shoot just took place, when the lights suddenly go out, and all the cameras around him start flashing randomly, giving us brief fleeting glimpses of the ghost woman approaching Ben with each flash of light. The film's climactic moments also has a few good shots, as well. However, most of the scares employed by the film are of the cheap variety, where innocent people like to suddenly jump into the frame rapidly while a loud noise bangs on the soundtrack. You'd think Ben would know that if his wife is so scared about this ghost woman terrorizing them, it wouldn't be a wise idea to just suddenly pop up behind her without warning.
Setting aside the cheap jolts and scares of the film, the movie really is about the young couple at the center of the film, and how they find their relationship tested by the events around them. Rachael Taylor makes for a surprisingly strong and sympathetic heroine, something I wasn't expecting walking in. More than being a shrieky victim, she decides to take matters into her own hands, and shows a surprising amount of conviction as she slowly starts to piece the story of this ghost woman together. Her realization of how this woman is connected to them beyond that night on the road places her in a tough situation where she must not only question everything she knows, but also her husband. As Ben, Joshua Jackson doesn't get as much to do, but it's not entirely his fault. The movie paints him as a distant and often angry man. The movie should have done a better job of making him a more three dimensional character, which would have made the film's final moments and revelations much more effective. The only other performer in the film who could be noted as a stand out is Megumi Okina as the ghost stalking the couple. While she's not particularly scary as a ghost, she does have a few effective heartbreaking moments during the flashback scenes that tell her story.
Bassett's Brenda is hit with a string of bad news almost as soon as the opening credits finish. She loses her job when the company she works for closes down suddenly, she can't afford to keep her youngest daughter in day care, and the city has cut off the power to her apartment. Her oldest son, Michael (Lance Gross), has a possible chance at a college basketball scholarship, but he might be lured into the temptations of drug dealing before he even gets a chance. Worst still, her deadbeat ex-husband won't help her. It's about this time that a letter arrives for Brenda that invites her to Georgia to attend the funeral of her father, whom she never actually knew. She reluctant to go, even if the bus tickets to Georgia are free, but her obnoxious Latino-stereotype best friend (Sofia Vergara) convinces her to go. Up to this point, I was finding the movie mostly tolerable, if not predictable. Aside from the best friend character, who almost comes across as a parody of a Latino woman, Perry had been showing a surprising amount of subtlety with the character of Brenda. Any thoughts that Perry might be showing growth as a filmmaker are dashed when Brenda and her family arrive in Georgia, and we finally meet the Browns.
The Brown family are an eccentric bunch. So eccentric, they find the need to scream most of their dialogue. Brenda doesn't seem quite sure what to make of them, and neither did I. Unlike the character, however, I had a much harder time being won over by their quirkiness. The first member of the family we meet is Leroy (David Mann), and he is not a sign of good things to come. He dresses like he buys his clothes from the circus, and he constantly makes "cute" mistakes when he talks, such as when he tells Brenda the family is going to gather to listen to her father's "last will and testicles". The rest of the family are a preachy, gossipy bunch who welcome Brenda into their home, and give her strength to keep on trying, no matter how bad things may seem. Despite the Brown family getting their name in the title, this movie isn't even really about them. The movie seems far more interested in the budding relationship Brenda has with a man named Harry (Rich Fox), who initially shows great interest in advancing son Michael's basketball career, but soon takes an even greater interest in her. In fact, I started to wonder why we even needed the Browns at all, since they seem to exist simply for broad comic relief that isn't funny in the first place.
Meet the Browns is an overstuffed movie that could have and should have made more room for the stuff that works. The relationship between Brenda and Harry may not exactly be deep, but there is a certain chemistry between the two actors that I found enjoyable. The movie affords the characters a couple of quiet moments to get closer, but they are few and fleeting. Instead, writer-director Perry keeps on trying to draw our attention with pointless melodrama. The whole subplot concerning Michael possibly giving up his basketball career to sell dope on the street with his friends is a cry of desperation just to add some heavy-handed drama to the proceedings. Equally unnecessary is the scene where Brenda's ex-husband shows up suddenly, offering to give her money, but only if she lets him have his way with her sexually. The movie works best as a simple drama of a woman who stays strong in the face of mounting problems and pressures, and how she keeps her faith in herself despite it all. Why does it need the drug dealers and the obnoxiously broad comic relief characters? It's almost as if Perry is wrestling with his own screenplay. He wants to tell an honest and uplifting story, but he also wants to give the fans of his past films what they're expecting. That's why we get a brief and pointless cameo of his Madea character, who pops up long enough to get arrested by the police after being stuck in an O.J. Simpson-style slow speed chase, then is never heard from again. Madea is yet another element that does not belong in this film.
Perry doesn't even seem to have faith in his own simple story of the two lead characters falling in love with each other. He just has to throw in a contrived plot twist out of the blue where Brenda just happens to hear one of the Brown family members talking about Harry, and how he has had debt problems in the past due to his previously unmentioned gambling habit. This bit of information is blatantly unnecessary, and exists only so that there can be tension in the relationship, and they can break up briefly. The fact that this revelation comes during the last 20 minutes of the movie only seems to drag things out instead of actually contribute to the story. Brenda and Harry are likable people, and don't deserve to be puppets, forced to dance for the amusement of an undercooked and overloaded plot. When Brenda later finds out the truth, we have to ask ourselves why Harry didn't just say it when she initially confronted him about his gambling. It would have saved them both a lot of trouble, and they could have been happier a lot sooner.
The folks at Blue Sky animation (the Ice Age films and Robots), along with first-time directors Jimmy Hayward and Steve Martino, make a lot of right moves, almost right off the bat. The film's look is slick and modern, which allows for some beautifully animated sequences and an overall lush and vibrant tone that brings the story's colorful locales to life. Fortunately, the look is not so modern as to drown out the appeal of the characters. The character designs are mostly faithful to the original drawings to the storybook, and there are even a couple hand-drawn sequences thrown in that look like the illustrations from the book come to life. This is the first time watching a movie based on one of Seuss' stories that I actually felt like I was watching a proper recreation of the worlds he used to create. From the bizarre animals that inhabit Horton's jungle home (some that resemble actual animals, and many that seem to come strictly from the imagination), to the almost surrealistic design of the world of the Whos, that at times seems to be heavily inspired by the paintings of M.C. Escher, this is a wonderful film to look at. Fortunately for the audience, it's a wonderful film to listen to as well, as it manages to perfectly capture the warm-hearted spirit of the original story.
For the few of you who don't know, the story centers on a care-free elephant named Horton (voice by Jim Carrey), who makes his home in the jungle of Nool, and seems content to pass his days frolicking in the local water hole and imparting wisdom to his little animal friends. Horton's world is turned upside down when a tiny speck happens to float by, and he hears a tiny voice from within calling for help. His large ears enable Horton to hear the voice, as none of the other animals can hear it, and he eventually learns that on this seemingly-insignificant speck is an entire race of microscopic creatures called Whos that have built an entire society upon it. The Whos have absolutely no idea that there is another world beyond their own, nor do they realize the danger their society is in now that the speck that carries their world has been knocked out of place. The absent-minded Mayor of Whoville (Steve Carell) is the first to discover Horton's existence, and realize the situation at hand. With the world of the Whos hanging in the balance, Horton must find a safe place to place the flower that the speck now sits upon, and convince the other animals of the jungle that there is life within the tiny speck. The narrow-minded and orderly Kangaroo (Carol Burnett) who rules over the animals, however, refuses to believe Horton's claims of there being other microscopic worlds, and will go to any means to destroy the "worthless" speck.
Horton Hears a Who is that rare family film that works on different levels for adults and children. Children will love the bright and vibrant animation, cute characters, and charming story with a good message that can be useful for both kids and adults. The movie is sweet and likable without being sappy, or trying hard to bring emotion. It is a simple tale that does not drown itself in needless subplots, like some past attempts to bring Seuss to the screen did, nor does it concern itself with being "hip" and "cool" for today's crowds. Yes, there are a couple pop culture references that have snuck in (there's a nod to Apocalypse Now, and a gag built around Myspace), but for the most part, the screenplay by Ken Daurio and Cinco Paul (who surprisingly contributed to the screenplay to last week's awful College Road Trip) keeps its heart in the right place, and the sense of humor sweet and not overbearing. The jokes don't fly fast and furious in this movie, but when they do, they often hit hard. There are some genuine laughs throughout, and although the story may seem somewhat padded to fill feature length, it never bothered me. The movie focuses on the charm of the characters to carry the movie, and it's more than enough to carry the light material.
A lot of this charm comes from the strong voice cast, which has gathered some of the strongest comedic talents working today. Aside from the previously mentioned Carrey, Carell, and Burnett, the film's cast also sports Seth Rogen (Superbad) as a little mouse that acts as Horton's closest friend, Saturday Night Live's Amy Poehler, who plays the wife of the Mayor of Whoville, who is desperately trying to understand her husband's talk of giant elephants and other worlds, and Will Arnett (Semi-Pro) who gets a lot of laughs as a vulture that the Kangaroo hires to destroy the speck. Everyone brings the right amount of energy to their performances, and creates the right mood. I was especially happy to see that Jim Carrey is able to reign in his trademark manic humor and mugging in his portrayal of Horton, and basically give us a likable everyman (every-elephant?) that we can root for. Steve Carell is also a stand out as the Mayor of the Whos that, despite his position of power, doesn't get a lot of respect from the ruling council, and mainly is just trying his best to do what is right for his people and for his large family that includes 96 daughters and one son.
The plot is old hat, as is to be expected. Jake Tyler (Sean Faris) is an angry teen with a past, since he was in the same car accident when his father was killed. His long-suffering mom (Leslie Hope) has decided the family needs a new start and moves them all to Orlando, because Jake's younger brother (Wyatt Smith) is a budding tennis prodigy and has a chance for a scholarship. Jake's new high school is one of those high schools where everyone's 25-years-old, and have the kind of bodies you only see in weight training equipment commercials. Everyone at school is also apparently into underground mixed martial arts fights, as they hold lavish parties in their mansions built around kicking the crap out of each other. Jake is lured into such a party by a pretty young girl named Baja (Amber Heard), who just happens to be dating the school bully and all-around fight champion, Ryan McCarthy (Cam Gigandet). Ryan coaxes Jake into a fight by bringing up Jake's dead father (boy, word travels fast in Orlando), and thoroughly kicks his ass in front of all of Jake's new friends. It's then that Jake's nerdy new best friend, Max (Evan Peters) introduces him to a local gym that specializes in martial arts run by a wise old coach and instructor named Jean Roqua (Djimon Hounsou), who will take Jake under his wing and teach him not to fight out of anger, but out of passion and spirit. Of course, this still won't stop Jake from beating the life out of anyone who challenges him during the course of the film.
Much like this weekend's other release, Doomsday, Never Back Down takes a whole bunch of popular films, sticks them in a blender, and then creates some kind of mutated love-child out of the various ingredients. The setting and world the teens live in seems to be lifted directly from TV's The O.C. The underground martial arts tournaments that the kids frequently participate in are from Fight Club. And the plot itself is basically a retread of 1984's The Karate Kid. There's not a single moment in the movie we can't predict, because we've seen it all before. I don't think I've delving into spoiler territory when I say that Jake loses the fight the first time he goes up against Ryan. After all, the movie is only 20 minutes old or so when this happens. I also don't think it will be a shock to anyone that the film's climax will be built around Jake and Ryan having a rematch at the ultimate underground mixed martial arts championship, The Beatdown. I won't say who wins, but you probably have a good idea who stands as the victor when the end credits come. The total derivative nature of the plot, and the movie's insistence on completely playing by expectations makes it hard to get excited about anything that happens. It's like a song you used to like, but have heard way too many times before. All the right notes are there, but they just don't register anymore. The wooden performances on display certainly don't help matters. As a hero, young Sean Faris has a likable screen presence, but there's nothing behind his performance here. He seems to know he's stuck in a cliche instead of a real character, and is just going through the motions. Amber Heard as the female lead and Cam Gigandet as the villain don't hold up much better. Only Djimon Hounsou (a two time Academy Award nominee) seems to bring any real passion to his role as the coach.
There are but two saving graces that prevent Never Back Down from being a complete waste of time. The first is that the fight scenes are surprisingly well done and pretty brutal for a PG-13 rated movie. I wouldn't go so far as to say they're realistic, but they are well shot and edited in such a way that we can get a clear view of the action. The other saving grace is the total flat-out ridiculous nature of the movie itself. It's not really the fact that these spoiled wealthy kids hold regular martial arts tournaments in their backyards without their parents knowing, though it must be hard wiping away all that blood before the parents get home. Actually, now that I think about it, aside from Jake and one scene where we meet Ryan's father, these kids don't seem to have parents. Then again, these "kids" all look like they're old enough to legally drink alcohol. I also loved the movie's mentality. The rivalry between Jake and Ryan is never really developed, so it has to keep on coming up with contrived situations for them to fight. They only share I think a total of three scenes together, and for a good part of the film, Ryan leaves Jake alone. So, in order to lead to the final standoff, the screenplay has Ryan beat up Jake's friend, Max, for no particular reason. That way, Jake can say he has to fight Ryan so that he doesn't have to ever again. I also love it how they have a throwaway scene that reveals that Ryan's father is a total jerk, seemingly explaining why the character is the way he is. It'd probably have more emotional impact if the actor playing the father didn't ham it up so much. The movie is full of unintentionally hilarious moments that hold a perverse form of entertainment in how seriously the actors take the material, while the audience is fighting back their laughter.
Our heroine, Eden Sinclair (Rhona Mitra), was there the day the military forced the infected away. She lost an eye when a stray bullet hit her, but she's grown up now, and is working for a special police force for the healthy half of the country. Her missing eye has been replaced with a robotic one that she can remove from her empty socket, and use as a hidden camera. Instead of thinking of clever uses for this eye camera, the movie just uses it for shock value in one scene, then pretty much forgets about it after that. Early on, Eden is approached by one of her superior officers on the force, who is played by Bob Hoskins. You may remember that Hoskins used to get lead roles in good movies like Mona Lisa and Who Framed Roger Rabbit. Now he appears in bit roles in stuff like this, where he exists simply to get the plot rolling, then disappear for a majority of the movie. He tells Eden that the Reaper Virus is back, and is starting to infect the healthy society. The only choice is for Eden and a small band of super elite soldiers to go into the long-abandoned other side of the wall, and look for a possible cure.
Eden and her crew cross over to the other side, and find there are a large group of survivors who are not exactly happy they've been ignored for so long. Fair enough, I say. They're cannibalistic punks who dress like they escaped from a casting call for a Mad Max remake. As villains, they're about as effective as the mindless enemy drones that populate some video games. They exist simply as targets, not as actual characters in a screenplay. In their introduction scene, they just keep on running at our heroes and screaming, one after another, simply to get blasted away like ducks in a shooting gallery. Eden is captured briefly, but befriends some other prisoners, who lead her to a completely different society of survivors that have built their society around a Renaissance Fair apparently. They live in a castle lorded over by a cranky doctor (played by Malcolm McDowell in a glorified cameo), dress in period-appropriate armor and clothes, ride on horseback, and hold old fashioned gladiator tournaments, which Eden finds herself forced into. Once again, our heroes are forced to flee, and then...
I'd go on, but why bother? If you think the above synopsis was hard to follow, try following it at a hundred miles per hour, which is how quickly this movie seems to run at. (Unfortunately, it does not move fast enough to make its nearly two hour running time go by any faster.) Doomsday has a plot that reads like it was conceived by an escapee from a nut house who watched too much television during their time in captivity, and the director just fails to make any sense of it all. The fact that the writer and director are the same person is not a good sign. It manages to steal ideas and images from 28 Days Later, the Road Warrior films, and a generic medieval fantasy adventure made for the Sci-Fi Channel, but it doesn't steal any of the good stuff. It's lifeless, it's inert, and it's quite frequently incoherent. This is a big surprise when you consider the movie is really just one big action set piece after another, peppered with occasional dialogue that sounds like the kind of one-liners Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone would have turned their noses up at during their film career peaks. The movie doesn't care about its plot, making sense of it, or giving its characters anything resembling personality.
What it does care about is gobs of over the top blood and violence that often comes across as being too cartoonish in nature to get the shock reaction the filmmakers obviously want. This is the kind of movie where a character tells Eden that the wall dividing the societies has an automated gun system to kill anything that comes close. In order to ram the point home, it instantly cuts to a little rabbit who wanders too close to the wall, and then we get a close up of the little critter getting blown to bits by the automated defense system. Marshall is obviously aiming for dark humor here, but he misses the point. It's not funny just to see a rabbit get turned into computer animated blood and organs that fly at the camera for no reason. This is one of the film's more subtle moments, as we also get numerous close ups of people getting their flesh burned off, eaten alive, and so many decapitations that I almost feel like watching the movie again so I could keep track. The best moment of violence occurs when one villain gets decapitated, and we get an extremely fake special effect shot of the head flying right at the camera, as if the director wishes his movie was in 3D. This leads to a hilarious moment later on where Eden uses his head as a trophy. Never mind the fact that it'd be virtually impossible for her to track down the head again given the circumstances the decapitation falls under. This movie wants to shock us with its violence, but it's so hilariously over the top that it starts to resemble an Itchy and Scratchy sketch from The Simpsons.
College Road Trip is the second starring vehicle for Martin Lawrence in less than a month, and the second strike out for the man. I didn't like him in Welcome Home, Roscoe Jenkins, and I think I hated him more here. That's because he's supposed to be playing an overly protective father, but Lawrence's performance is so over the top, he starts to resemble a madman, and I found myself fearing for the safety of his family. Consider this example: Lawrence plays a cop who doesn't want to let his teenage daughter go, and becomes afraid when he finds out she has plans to attend Georgetown University, which is too far away for him to keep an eye on her. When he finds out about the Georgetown plan, he goes to the shooting range to blow off some steam. He overhears a pair of fellow officers talking about the crazy things they used to do back in college, and this makes him so angry, he starts picking up a bigger gun each time, and blowing bigger holes into the target. By the end, he's cackling like an escapee from a mental hospital, and has a crazed look in his eye. What is this supposed to represent? I had visions that the next scene would include Lawrence coming home, and splattering his family across the walls with a shotgun. The only thing that convinced me otherwise is that this was a Disney movie, and that its rated G. A more serious movie, and my hunch probably would have been right, considering Lawrence's take on this scene.
Despite Martin Lawrence getting first billing, the real star of the movie is Raven-Symone, who plays the daughter. She's a young actress who got her start appearing on The Cosby Show, and has since become popular on The Disney Channel in a self-titled sitcom, That's So Raven. This is her first leading big screen role, and not only does she star in it, but she's also credited as one of the Executive Producers and gets to sing on the soundtrack. This is supposed to launch her movie career, so I guess it's only natural that director Roger Kumble (Just Friends) would throw in a scene where she gets to sing. This movie mishandles the opportunity, however, by making the musical number completely stop the movie, and not in a good way. The scene in question comes when the father and daughter are riding on a bus filled with Japanese tourists. Raven-Symone decides to take over the karaoke machine, and launches the entire bus into a music and dance number. It's not only badly choreographed, it's also pointless, and the scene exists only because the young actress is one of the producers, and she wanted to highlight her singing talents. If Miss Pearman (that's her last name, according to her info on the IMDB) wanted her first film to be a vanity project, she should have held out for a better script.
I realize I'm pretty far into this review, and I haven't talked much about the plot. Not much to talk about, really. As I mentioned earlier, Lawrence is an overly protective/borderline psychotic father who decides to drive his daughter cross country to Georgetown University, so that they can spend some time together. They have a couple stowaways in the form of Lawrence's young nerdy son, and the son's pet pig who is smart enough to play chess and understand English, but is not smart enough to realize that eating a bunch of coffee beans is not a good idea. This leads to the inevitable scene where the pig will be buzzed on caffeine, and start running around in sped up motion around the building. This moment also leads into a second inevitable scene, where the buzzed pig will crash a nearby wedding for the sole purpose that a road trip comedy is not complete until there is either a food fight, or someone gets splattered with a lot of food. Not much really happens during the entire time the family is on the road. The entire movie has a fragmented and episodic quality, almost as if the script was written in bits and pieces, and then they tried putting those pieces together in a coherent fashion. There's a scene where father and daughter find themselves forced to jump out of a plane, and there's a scene where the father winds up in prison after he breaks into a Sorority House to spy on his daughter while she's having an innocent sleep over there, but nothing really registers. That's mainly due to the lazy humor on display that usually revolves around the actors mugging for the camera.
The movie also touches upon another well-worn road trip cliche, in that every family comedy centered around a road trip needs to have the main family constantly have run ins with another obnoxiously perky family. The obnoxious family must be happy to the point of idiocy, and must also like to sing the entire time. (Folk songs and showtunes are preferable music choices.) I am reminded of R.V., the family road trip comedy from 2006 that featured Robin Williams and his screen family having constant run ins with such a family. The head of that family was played by Jeff Daniels, an actor I admire, who at least seemed to be making an effort with the character the movie had given him. The head of the obnoxious family in College Road Trip is played by Donny Osmond, and if you ever need any proof that Donny Osmond is no Jeff Daniels, here it is. He certainly has the obnoxious part down, but he does it so well that he's never actually funny. You just want to scrape him right off the screen. I did not recognize the women who play his wife and teenage daughter, but they match him every step of the way in making me wish they weren't even in the movie in the first place. I will close this paragraph by stating that Donny Osmond has given Larry the Cable Guy some hard competition when it comes time to decide the worst performance of 2008 at the end of the year.
Terry Leather (Jason Statham) is a family man struggling to run a car business, and forget his criminal past in 1971 London. (He still has ties to his old days, however, and is not above fixing the speedometers on his used cars.) Into his life steps Martine Love (Saffron Burrows), a woman from his past with a proposition for a seemingly sure-fire get rich scheme. She proposes that Terry, along with old friends and accomplices Kevin (Stephen Campbell Moore) and David (Daniel Mays), get a crew together to pull off a bank heist where they will tunnel into the bank's safety deposit vault from the basement of an abandoned store just two doors down. The crew is formed, and the plan seemingly goes off without a hitch, though Terry quickly begins to suspect that Martine has other plans than just stealing money and riches. It seems that what Martine is really after is a safe deposit box that holds some incriminating information for some very powerful people. Terry and his friends find themselves drawn into a deadly string of blackmail, double crosses, and buried secrets that a lot of people would prefer remain buried.
The Bank Job is a movie that doesn't sweat the details, but at the same time, is careful not to let the characters go ignored. I walked into the movie completely unknowing about the original event, and found myself increasingly intrigued as each detail was revealed. Based on my own personal research after seeing the film, it would appear that most of the screenplay is speculation, and as the movie states in its closing subtitles, the names have been changed "to protect the guilty". Still, there is a ring of truth throughout The Bank Job that made me think that yes, it could have really happened this way. It's a good thing that the filmmakers have decided to tell this story in a clear and concise manner, because besides the bank heist itself, we also have a violent druglord/"black power" activist, crooked cops, porn kings with criminal ties, and a lot of cover ups vying for our attention. Surprisingly, it never becomes overwhelming. This is due mostly to the fact that, aside from a couple early scenes that jump back and forth in time settings, the movie doesn't mess around with the chronology, and just gives us the story straight. It also lets us into the individual world of Terry and his friends, making them appear as actual people, rather than characters caught in a twisting crime caper.
The movie also doesn't take itself entirely seriously, which is almost a must in a film such as this. It has a lot of fun with the fact that these are petty conmen, not professional bank robbers, and they are likely to make mistakes. The humor feels natural. These guys are not bunglers or idiots, just people who sometimes feel like they're in over their heads, and we laugh with them. More importantly, it does a great job of creating a feeling of suspense, without hitting us over the head. The simple shot of seeing a police car casually moving by the outside of the abandoned store where the men make their base of operations actually managed to make me tense up a little, which made me realize just how effective this movie was. There's an effective subplot where a man with a ham radio just happens to accidentally pick up the walky talky signal of the men as they are digging the tunnel from the store's basement to the bank's vault. He hears Terry's conversations with a man placed on the roof across the street, who acts as lookout during the job itself, and part of the suspense is wether or not the man with the radio will notify the police or not. It's a minor character, but it's important, as he not only sets part of the film in motion, but he creates the right level of tension that things could go wrong at any moment. The movie keeps on grabbing our attention in little and subtle ways such as this, and the end result is always more exciting than any shootout scene I've seen recently.
The Bank Job's main cast is made up mostly unrecognizable actors, which I think is a smart move on the part of the filmmakers, as it adds to the realism. The most recognizable face in the cast is lead star, Jason Statham, who has been grooming himself to be a major action star in films such as War and The Transporter. While his portrayal of Terry Leather is not far removed from some of his past roles, he gets to show a little bit more of a human side here. He is a family man who is genuinely afraid for his safety, and the safety of those around him once he starts to realize just what is going on. Terry is the way he is due to the hand life has given him up to the point we initially meet him. But, we also get the sense that there is a different, and perhaps, better person waiting to get out if he could just have the chance. This is probably Mr. Statham's most accessible role yet, but when you consider his last role was as a heroic turnip farmer saving a fantasy kingdom, that's probably not much of a stretch. Equally engaging is Saffron Burrows, who makes her Martine Love much more than the pretty face her character initially comes across as.
Director and co-writer, Roland Emmerich is no stranger to brainless spectacles. This is the guy who brought us Independence Day and Hollywood's 1998 take on Godzilla, after all. There's a very fine line between brainless and just plain brain dead, unfortunately. 10,000 B.C. is short on spectacle, short on plot, and short on just about anything that people go to the movies for. There are characters and a love story to drive the bare bones plot, but this seems to be added in as an afterthought. I got the impression that Emmerich and fellow screenwriter, Harald Kloser (a film score composer making his first screenplay credit), had the idea for a couple cool scenes, then tried to add a bunch of filler material between them. They threw in some sketchy characters that hardly reach two dimensions to inhabit this filler, and called it a screenplay. In order for spectacle to work, even the cheese-filled variety such as this, there has to be something for the audience to get excited about. This movie is just one big tease.
The plot, if it can even be called that, is set in the days of early man. The heroes are a tribal people who speak perfect English, all have the bodies of supermodels, and hunt mammoths for food. The two characters we're supposed to be focused on are a pair of young lovers named D'Leh (Steven Strait) and Evolet (Camilla Belle). Why they are in love, and why we should care about them, the movie never goes out of its way to explain. The rest of the villagers do not really matter. They exist simply to be captured when a group of foreign invaders come riding into their peaceful tribe, and kidnap most of them to work as slaves back in their own home colony. Evolet is one of the captured, so D'Leh and a small handful of others set out to find where they've been taken to, and to seek the aid of other tribes that have also been invaded by this enemy. There's a mammoth herd here, a saber tooth tiger there, but they have nothing to do with anything. They're just computer generated special effects who are there simply because the filmmakers felt the current scene needed a special effect shot. I'd be more impressed if the effects didn't look so out of place with the actors most of the time.
10,000 B.C. probably would have worked better as a silent movie, or a subtitled one, as most of the dialogue that comes out of the mouths of these people is as wooden as the spears they carry. The good tribes are the only people in this movie who have mastered the Queen's English, naturally. The evil invading tribe speak in subtitles, and sometimes have their voices mechanically altered and lowered, so that they sound more threatening and demonic. No one in this movie is allowed to have a personality, or act differently from one another. Everybody in each tribe talks, thinks, and behaves exactly the same, with facial hair and differing body types being the main way to tell them apart. This would make it hard to get involved in the story, but the movie dodges this tricky issue by not even having a story in the first place. Once the film's main tribe is attacked, the movie turns into an endless string of filler material and padding to drag the whole thing out to feature length. Aside from a brief encounter with some bird-like prehistoric creatures, there are no moments of action or danger until D'Leh and his followers reach the land of the invading army. The movie throws a saber tooth tiger encounter to fool us into thinking something's gonna happen, but the tiger winds up being just as boring as the human characters inhabiting the movie, and is just millions in special effects budget wasted on something that didn't need to be there in the first place, other than to move the shaky plot along.
Anne (Natalie Portman) and Mary Boleyn (Scarlet Johansson) are sisters who become divided when their father (Mark Rylance) pressures the family into assisting King Henry VIII (Eric Bana) into creating a male heir to the British throne. With Henry's wife, Queen Catherine (Ana Torrent), unable to give him the son he seeks after many failed attempts, Anne is chosen to become the King's mistress. However, it is Mary who initially captures Henry's attention, and she is quickly drawn into the world of the Royal Family. It is because of this, and a series of other events, that Anne feels betrayed by her sister, and begins to conspire against Mary, and turn the King away from her and the son Mary eventually bears him. The scheming Anne goes even further, convincing Henry to turn his back completely on his marriage to Catherine and marry her, so that Anne herself may be Queen instead of a mere mistress. Anne's own ambitions would eventually prove not only to be her own downfall, but to split her family apart forever.
When you strip away the 16th Century English setting, the impressive production values, and the lush costumes and settings, the story of The Other Boleyn Girl almost starts to resemble an episode of Jerry Springer with its themes of infidelity, betrayal, and even incest. Once again, I ask that you do not misunderstand. This is by no means a trashy or simple minded film. There is a complexity lying in the relationship between Anne and Mary. Despite everything that happens, Mary tries her best to stay faithful and loyal to her sister, and keep the family together best she can. It is a tragic story on many levels. It is a story of Anne's own dreams of grandeur leading to her undoing, it is a story of a family destroyed by ambitions of their own, but most of all, it is the story of how both Anne and Mary are manipulated and ultimately betrayed by an unfaithful and insecure King who seems to see the two sisters, and ultimately all of his relationships, as merely means for his own personal desires, and little else. He is only able to show his love when these people are working out for the best for him. As soon as things turn sour in his eyes, or he is distracted by something new, he moves on. You get the sense early on that for all of Anne's scheming and planning, she is wasting her time. And yet, we are not bored, even though we feel like we are ahead of the characters. Anne and Mary are fleshed out and deep characters who have a large variety of feelings and emotions, and they are brought out wonderfully by the screenplay, that seems to savor these personalities, along with their personal desires and insecurities.
The first half of the film, which concentrates on their relationship with each other and King Henry, is when the film is at its best. It's a gripping, highly entertaining, and involving human drama that doesn't get bogged down in the historical details, and simply lets us savor the characters and their situation. When the film turns its attention away from the characters, and tries to focus on the story, this adaptation of the novel by Philippa Gregory stands on slightly less stable ground. Many of the film's historical details, including Anne's reign as Queen, and the reactions of the King's Court to his actions of marrying another and breaking ties with the Roman church, are glossed over and feel like they're barely touched upon. It seemed to me almost as if a lot of the film during this portion had been filmed then cut, or perhaps left out completely to keep the film's pace up. While this approach prevents the movie from dragging, historical buffs or fans of the original novel, may be disappointed that the movie concentrates almost solely on this bizarre triangle between the King and the two sisters, and little on the story outside of them. Those who are simply expecting an entertaining story and not a history lesson will most likely find this tolerable. What did bother me a little bit more, however, is the fact that King Henry, interesting as he is portrayed in this film, often comes across as little more than a plot device than an actual character. We don't learn much about the reasoning behind his infamous infidelity, nor does he hold as much weight behind his character as Anne and Mary. It is to the credit of Eric Bana, however, that he portrays Henry as a very flawed and insecure man, which makes the character very human.
It may seem strange that a film about a famous scandal in the British Royal Family does not contain a single British actor in its three leading roles. Despite the fact that their accents are somewhat shaky at times, Portman and Johansson handle their roles with relative ease, and create powerful individual performances, as well as a compelling relationship. Natalie Portman obviously gets the showier role as the scheming Anne, and is the one who grabs our attention for most of the film. She does not play her character broadly or in an over the top way. Rather, she comes across as a very charming and somewhat over confident woman who thought she had everything in control, and lets her own desires slowly destroy her and everyone around her. It adds a great sense of weight to her performance and the movie itself during her later scenes when the realization of her actions are finally upon her. Scarlet Johansson does leave as overly strong of an impression as the equally beautiful, but slightly more withdrawn and less ambitious Mary. This does not make her performance any less mesmerizing, and in a way, it is the more difficult of the two characters, as she must express most of her emotions solely with her face. She is low-key, but no less memorable as a woman thrown into chaos by members of her own family.
The title character (Christina Ricci) is a young woman who was born to wealthy parents (Catherine O'Hara and Richard E. Grant) and seemed destined to have it all, if it weren't for the fact that her father's side of the family is cursed. It seems that years ago, her father's family angered a local witch, who placed a curse on them that the next woman born into their family would be born with the face of a pig. Indeed, Penelope was born with the snout and ears of a pig, and the curse can only be broken if she finds true love. Her parents have sheltered her from the outside world all this time, but this hasn't stopped them from trying to find a man for their daughter that can break the curse. Unfortunately, every guy who lays eyes upon her nose goes diving out the window in terror. (A visual gag that is cute the first time the movie uses it, but tiresome the 30th.) Penelope eventually decides to run away from home and experience the outside world, wrapping a scarf around the bottom part of her face to hide her abnormality. There might be someone out there who can break the curse, and that someone just might be Max (James McAvoy), a penniless piano player and gambler who initially is working for a sleazy tabloid photographer (Peter Dinklage) to snap a picture of the fabled and often rumored "pig girl", but starts to fall for her the more time he spends around her.
Despite the support of Hollywood star, Reese Witherspoon (who not only produced the film, but also has a small role as a woman who befriends Penelope after she heads out on her own), Penelope has been sitting on the studio shelf for a little over two years. My guess is the recent success of Disney's modern day fairy tale, Enchanted, inspired the studio to try its luck. Penelope is no Enchanted, however. This is a surprisingly dull and lifeless film that doesn't even seem interested in its own premise. Here is a movie that cries out for a light, funny, magical touch, but the pace of the final product on display is leaden and uninspired. It takes almost an hour for the story to finally reach the outside world, which means we have to sit through a good 50 minutes or so (and this is a 90 minute movie) of Penelope isolated in her own home, and the gag of people throwing themselves out the window or running away over and over for far longer than necessary. Even after the lead character finally sets out, and the movie looks like it's finally going to pick up, things remain the same. We never get to truly experience Penelope discovering the world, as most of this aspect of the story is pushed aside in music montages. The most we get is Penelope sitting in a bar, sipping a beer mug from a straw, so that no one can see what's beneath her scarf. A couple scenes later, her parents track her down, and send her back home. Here is a movie that could have been spirited and uplifting, but its so concerned with the mundane aspects, it never takes advantage of its own potential.
The love story that is supposed to be at the center of Penelope is also curiously lacking, due to the fact that the romantic leads spend so little time together, and the few scenes they do spend together are completely dull and lifeless. We never get a sense that a real relationship is building between the two, not only because the movie gives them nothing to do together, but they come across as complete opposites in terms of performances. Christina Ricci is plucky and likable in her portrayal of Penelope, so much so you wish her performance was inhabiting a better movie. James McAvoy, on the other hand, is a lifeless bore, who never comes across as anyone the audience can get behind. Not even the usually reliable Catherine O'Hara can escape from the film's sloppy writing. Her performance as Penelope's mother runs the range of being sympathetic and sweet, to being a screaming harpy who is insensitive and shrill. Her character fits whatever the story requires her to be, so sometimes she comes across as being sensitive to her daughter, and sometimes she is treated as the villain. Her relationship with her husband, and the strain the curse must have placed on their relationship all these years, is also completely ignored. It's ignored so much, Richard E. Grant may as well have not even bothered to show up as her father, as he's given little dialogue, and even less to do with anything that happens in the movie itself.
