Foster on Film – Page 39 – The Film Criticism of Matthew M. Foster

The Initiation of Sarah (2006)

Oct 052006

Sarah (Mika Boorem), a strong and hot chick with a past of accidentally tossing things around with her mind, and her sister Lindsey (Summer Glau), who lacks the depth of a dried up riverbank, arrive at college and the world of good verses evil sororities. Evil, represented by Chorine (Joanna Garcia) and Alpha Nu, needs Sarah as a sacrifice to their eternal flame. Good, represented by Dr. Hunter (Jennifer Tilly) and PED, wants Sarah to use her powers to rid the Earth of demonic sororities. Sounds like Greek life to me.

An old made-for-TV movie gets a ’90s makeover, and leaves the old tone and the angst at a pre-production meeting. In the post-Buffy TV world, females are smart, sexy, and kick butt. And filling all those requirements are Mika Boorem and Joanna Garcia as the battling witches. But delectability (and butt kicking) is not restricted to the near twenty-year-olds. Jennifer Tilly is always a delight, and gives all the beauties a run for the money both in sensuality and humorous delivery. That girl’s got talent. Then there is Morgan Fairchild, playing the mother. Ah, if more shows had mothers like that. I’m reasonably certain she’s bathing in the blood of virgins. It’s the only explanation. This is a film that tries to get away with casting fan favorite Summer Glau (Serenity) as the plain girl. Right.

The story is nothing new, but is just entertaining enough not to distract from the characters and the very engaging actresses. Luckily those actresses are given something worthwhile to say. The dialog is witty, 90s-style:

“Trust me, If you’re a goat or a virgin, I’d avoid that side of campus altogether”

“How do you remain so calm?”
“Yoga. And not having a soul helps.”

“My sister is tongue-kissing the devil while I’m learning to pull a rabbit out of a hat”
“If you could do that I wouldn’t be so worried.”

“Without my so-called powers, their pit-of-eternal badness will just go out.”

“One thing I do know: taunting the demonic priestess, not a good idea.”

It doesn’t get more Buffy than that (and for those of you who’ve never seen Buffy the Vampire Slayer: 1—It’s a good thing for the lines to sound like those in Buffy, and 2—Rent the first four seasons tonight).

With catchy dialog, a great cast, and a not-too-silly plot, it all sounds pretty good, and it is, except (damn there’s always an “except”) Lindsey. She is mean, petty, stupid, and shallow as only a sitcom character can be. Summer Glau’s innate cuteness can only do so much. You really need to like the character, but not only did I want her to die, I couldn’t accept that Sarah wouldn’t want her six feet under. Sisters be damned, some people just suck. Since much of the story revolves around keeping her safe, it was hard to get concerned with the action. If you watch this at a party, expect to hear chants of, “Let her die” and, “No, don’t save her” every few minutes.

Reviews, Witches Tagged with: Three Reels

The Covenant (2006)

Oct 052006

Four teenage boys, Caleb, Pogue, Tyler, and Reid (Steven Strait, Taylor Kitsch, Chace Crawford, Toby Hemingway), all students at an elite boarding school, have inherited the magic of their families. They can do almost anything, but trouble appears in the form of a member of the long missing fifth family. He wants more power, and is willing to kill Caleb’s and Pogue’s girlfriends (Laura Ramsey, Jessica Lucas) to get it.

Flashy and screaming just how hip it is, The Covenant is teen-friendly witchcraft for The O.C. generation. Pretty seventeen-year-olds (the actors are twenty to twenty-six) fill the screen, dressed to be cool and ready to rock out. Oh, there’s a plot, but it takes second fiddle to chiseled abs. This might be a movie, or it might be shampoo and clothing commercials, strung together with state-of-the-art computer effects. Plus there’s homoerotic group showering and girls chatting in their panties. It’s sex, PG-13 style.

All that might make you think this light-as-air piece of new millennium Wicca-action-horror is a disaster, but it’s not. It shoots low, and hits its mark. The people are supposed to be pretty, and they are. The soundtrack is supposed to be heavy and cool, and it is. The effects are supposed to wow, and they do. The general storyline isn’t embarrassing, and the acting is well above teen horror level (again, not exactly a high mark).

As long as you aren’t expecting Shakespeare, and can’t get enough of faux-teen culture, there isn’t anything wrong with what’s on screen. The only real problems are what’s missing. The characters are barely developed; for the first fifteen minutes I couldn’t tell our heroes apart from several of their classmates, and by movies end I didn’t know most of them any better. Worse, the rules and limits of magic are hardly mentioned. It’s impossible to know if a situation is dangerous since the four’s powers can, at times, deal with extreme situations (getting smashed by a semi), while it sputters at lesser trials (falling off a motorcycle). Is the film inconsistent? Nope. To be inconsistent, there’s got to be some sort of normalcy established. Inconsistency would be an improvement.

The climax feels as if several script pages were lost. I kept waiting for the members of The Covenant to reveal their brilliant plan. I’m still waiting. Perhaps that was a way of making a statement about how high school students fail to properly prepare for important events in their lives. Or perhaps it is an indication that writer J.S. Cardone and director Renny Harlin weren’t prepared when filming began.

An underwritten male version of The Craft, with influences from The Lost Boys and Dark City (magic warfare consists of bolts, balls, and waves of transparent energy rippling across the frame), The Covenant is the really hot, but dim and shallow chick that you meet at a bar when your cash is low. You’re not going to get anywhere with her, and she has nothing to say, but she’s not bad to look at for an hour or so.

Reviews, Witches Tagged with: Three Reels

The Pink Panther (2006)

Oct 042006

When a French soccer coach (played by the very British Jason Statham) is murdered and the Pink Panther diamond is stolen, fame-seeking Chief Inspector Dreyfus (Kevin Kline) brings in Inspector Jacques Clouseau (Steve Martin) to bungle the case. With Detective Second Class Ponton (Jean Reno) at his side, and following pop star and suspect Xania (Beyoncé Knowles), Clouseau is far more successful than anticipated.

Yes, the Pink Panther is back. That’s the diamond which gave its name to the multi-picture slapstick comedy series featuring the feebleminded Inspector Clouseau. It looks different now, about half the size it was in the older films, and set in a ring. It is less attractive, less interesting, and looks a bit silly and out of place. Yeah, somewhere in there I stopped talking about the rock and switched to commenting on this unnecessary prequel.

Writer-director Blake Edwards began the series in 1963 with The Pink Panther. Intended as a set piece for David Niven’s suave jewel thief, Peter Sellers stole the show with a combination of witty dialog and walking into walls. The film introduced memorable music from Henry Mancini and an animated panther that frolicked in the credits. Within a year, Sellers was back as the unquestioned star in A Shot in the Dark, the best of the ten related features. Sellers would return three more times alive, and once after his death (in an embarrassing exercise in greed that spliced unused footage from a previous film to new shots, producing an abomination) to play the ever more cartoonish policeman. Not content to let the series retain what little dignity it had left, Blake continued making “Pink Panther” films without Sellers, and without anything close to humor. Finally, in 1993, he let the corpse be. Now, thirteen years later, it has been resurrected by producer Robert Simons (who is the man behind such artistic triumphs as Joe Dirt and Corky Romano) and director Shawn Levy (who helmed the remake of Cheaper by the Dozen and episodes of the 90’s Lassie TV series), with Steve Martin (who shows no sign of remembering that he was once clever) in the lead. Under the circumstances, it could have been a lot worse.

Obviously Martin is no Sellers, and the jokes have a musty smell about them, but the new The Pink Panther (which is not a remake of the ’63 film, but a story about how Clouseau became an inspector, even though it is set forty years too late) is far from the worst of the series. There are a few laughs to be found, and it is generally mildly amusing.

Martin dominates the movie, with everyone else playing straight man. He contorts his face while abusing a French accent, knocks down curtains, causes too many accidents to count, and falls down. That’s pretty much it. The talents of Kevin Kline (who would have been better in the lead) and Jean Reno are wasted. Beyoncé Knowles is little more than furniture (she had a more complex role in Austin Powers in Goldmember; dwell on that for a moment). So it all comes down to how much you like watching Steve Martin do a tired Peter Sellers routine.

Half of the jokes are directly related to ones from the old films. If you haven’t seen those movies, the gags aren’t as funny. And if you have, its hard to figure why watching this is a better choice than tossing on your DVD of A Shot in the Dark.

Still, there is a little magic to be found when the first notes of Mancini’s theme call forth the Pink Panther (the character, not the gem or the film title). I’ve had a worse time at the cinema. But instead of dwelling any more on this production, I’m going to get my old DVDs out.

The other films in the series are: The Pink Panther (1963), A Shot in the Dark (1964), Inspector Clouseau (1968) with Alan Arkin in the title role, The Return of the Pink Panther (1975), The Pink Panther Strikes Again (1976), Revenge of the Pink Panther (1978), Trail of the Pink Panther (1982), “starring” Sellers after his death, Curse of the Pink Panther (1983), which introduced a new, bumbling policeman, and Son of the Pink Panther (1993), with Roberto Benigni as Clouseau’s illegitimate son.

Comedy, Miscellaneous, Reviews Tagged with: Two Reels

Click (2006)

Oct 042006

Michael Newman (Adam Sandler) is a workaholic who ignores his far-hotter-than-he-could-possibly-get wife, Donna (Kate Beckinsale), and his two kids, in order to please his egotistical boss (David Hasselhoff ). After a tense evening, he is given a universal remote from Morty (Christopher Walken), that allows him to pause and fast-forward through life.

I had thought, or perhaps hoped, that the era of the Workaholic-learning-a-lesson film had ended years ago, but here we are again, in well traveled territory. If you’ve seen more than a few movies in your life, you’ve already seen everything this one has to offer. It is a 1950s message movie, written for a twelve-year-old audience, which makes me wonder what the producers had in mind. Anyone who is likely to find it hilarious to see Adam Sandler squatting on a desk and farting into David Hasselhoff”s face for about a minute isn’t likely to be excited by the ham-handed moralizing. And anyone who is looking for a relationship film with a strong theme is going to wonder why so much time is spent with the dog humping a stuffed duck.

For the first hour, there are more laughs than in the average Sandler movie. But those laughs aren’t as loud as they should be. It’s hard not to come up with something mildly funny when working with a man who has a remote control to the world. And that’s all they did come up with: mildly funny routines. Any three randomly chosen twelve-year-olds could have written the script and done as well. That doesn’t mean it’s not humorous to see Michael mute the dog or fast-forward through sex. But bring a cleverer than normal twelve-year-old to the theater and he can feed you better material scene by scene.

After the Three Stooges-like hour, the movie takes a turn into Capra-land. After establishing that this is slapstick silliness, everything becomes serious. There are still a few outlandish jokes (Michael Jackson’s clone suing him for sexual molestation) which now feel out of place, but most of the time is spent on thumping the message against the side of your head (it’s not deep enough to actually enter your brain). Family is good. Don’t fast-forward (i.e. waste) your life. Yeah. Got it.

Sandler does an adequate job, though everyone in the film is better. Walken always makes me smile. He’s just going through the motions, but he’s more entertaining when half asleep than most actors are at the top of their game. Hasselhoff is a surprise, in a movie in desperate need of anything unexpected. He easily steals every scene he’s in, creating layers of obnoxiousness. He’s got a new career playing jerks if he wants it.

The question that kept going through my mind as I was semi-entertained by this somewhat funny flick was: what is Kate Beckensale doing as the third-banana, generic wife? Both her talent and charm are wasted. If she’s going slumming, at least she should have a lead role. But outside of looking far cuter than kittens, pandas, and an entire college cheerleading squad combined, Beckensale does nothing. She’s furniture. Beautiful furniture, but still replaceable by a nice chair or any of a thousand young actresses. The woman who made Emma and Cold Comfort Farm so amusing should have better things to do with her time.

Click doesn’t make much sense, even after accepting the premise. Why does he fast-forward through everything instead of putting the world on pause? Michael could have done so much more, but the film’s message needed him to keep hitting that one button. But this isn’t a movie that is aided by thought. Your mind will only get in the way. Enjoy what it has to offer. You’re unlikely to remember it in a few years.

Comedy, Miscellaneous, Reviews Tagged with: Two Reels

Earthstorm (2006)

Oct 042006

A meteor strike on the Moon causes it to crack, and drop a bunch of really big rocks onto the Earth. I’d use a more scientific term, but science has no place in this movie. Not surprisingly, the people of Earth are concerned, particularly because this means a quarter of the Moon is going to split off and kill us all. A hot babe scientist knows how to save the world; she just needs the aid of all-around-swell guy and demolitions expert John Redding (Stephen Baldwin). As a building-implosion expert, he obviously knows how to use nuclear bombs on the Moon to weld shot the crevice. Of course they have to work around a nasty government agent (Dirk Benedict), who causes problems because… Because… I guess he causes problems because he’s a dick. There’s no other reason. Well, I suppose he might find it unlikely that a construction worker can do planetary calculations in his head while flying over the moon in on a space shuttle, but no one mentions that, so probably not.

If you’re familiar with low I.Q. sci-fi, the plot should be familiar. This is a cheap rip-off of Armageddon, with even less brains. That doesn’t mean it’s a worse movie. Once you reach a certain level of stupidity, additional silliness is actually a boon. And Earthstorm is the Olympic pole vault champion of stupidity. It is wildly, joyously stupid. There isn’t a single moment that makes sense on a character, plot, or scientific level. The dialog is laughable and the sets can best be called quaint. This is a film where mission control operates out of one small room, gets its electricity off of the city grid, and has one back-up generator with enough diesel for about an hour.

This is a dumb movie, and because of that, not in spite of it, I enjoyed it. Not a lot, but a little is something. It is completely free of self-importance. There are no pompous speeches, and no one is pretending that somebody’s death will emotionally effect anyone. It’s fast moving and sticks to its plot. The filmmakers were aware that the audience was not going to care about these people, so no time is wasted in unnecessary and tedious character development. There’s the hot girl with a mission, the nice guy who blows things up, the dedicated pilot, the snotty presidential advisor, and the efficient manager. That’s all the personality the characters have. What more do they need?

I’d have liked more scenes of destruction. This is a disaster movie. The obviously CGI fireballs hitting Mexico City are a start, but there’s not nearly enough to go with them. Couldn’t they have clobbered a major governmental building? Guess it wasn’t in the budget.

Earthstorm is a movie to laugh at, not with. As long as you can take it in that vein, perhaps downing a shot whenever a law of physics is violated, you’ll be able to sit through it, and even smile.

Disaster, Reviews Tagged with: Two Reels

Forgiving the Franklins (2006)

Oct 042006

The four members of the stodgy, conservative, ultra-religious Franklin family live their lives around what is proper, until a car crash puts Frank (Robertson Dean), Betty (Teresa Willis), and their son Brian (Vince Pavia) into direct contact with Jesus, who removes their sense of shame. Returned to Earth, the three find new meaning in life, but their behavior upsets daughter Caroline (Aviva), shocks their friend Peggy (Mari C. Blackwell), and alienates them from society.

It is not uncommon for the film festival circuit to be filled with unengaging, pretentious, slice-of-life pictures that say nothing of interest or importance. They exist on the screen for two hours, and then disappear, only to appear at other film festivals before disappearing forever. The SunDance Film Festival’s booklet, which tends to describe every movie as if it is a documentary on depressed, inner-city, single mothers, gave little reason to think Forgiving the Franklins would be anything unusual. Ah, I love it when I’m surprised, and this is a movie that surprises in almost every way. Smart, accessible, and fall-from-your-chair funny, Forgiving the Franklins is everything that film should be.

Writer-director-producer Jay Floyd presents us with rigid, repressed people that may look more familiar than anyone would like to admit. The Franklins are upstanding members of their town and church. These are the kind of people that can always be counted on, that get things done, and are completely humorless. Then he twists them, using them to examine all the hypocrisies of modern life. Rapidly, it becomes as difficult for the viewer to understand shame as it is for the Franklins. Certainly a majority of the satire is focused on conservative Christian institutions and behaviors, but this is not an anti-religious film. Nor is it a simple one. It isn’t even always a comedy. Floyd has a better handle on humor than tragedy, and the film is at its most effective when it is light, but the more serious elements are reminders that this isn’t material to simply enjoy and then forget. This is a movie that will stick with you.

While the script is what places Forgiving the Franklins high above normal cinematic fare, it wouldn’t work without a cast that can handle the extremes of emotion and tone, and this cast has no weak members. Aviva (who misplaced her last name sometime in the last few years) and Pavia have long careers ahead of them, as does the captivating Blackwell. Dean displays an uncommon ease with comedy while acting as a powerful presence, but it is Willis who is a revelation. Her role as the bland, holier-than-thou housewife who becomes a sexy, caring icon of what life is about, is the pivotal one in the picture, and few actresses could carry it off. I was astonished at how sexless she appeared at the movie’s start, and how desirable she became as it progressed, without a noticeable change in makeup or other non-acting aids.

One of the best films of the year (if it had been released a month earlier, it would have deserved Oscar nominations in at least three of the major categories), Forgiving the Franklins has yet to be picked up for distribution. Perhaps the big companies fear it will be a difficult sell, with its controversial subject matter, candid discussion of sexuality, and nudity, but don’t most people enjoy the latter two? As for the first, Forgiving the Franklins isn’t controversial, just insightful. No one left the SunDance screening ready to argue. But everyone seemed ready to think.

For now, keep an eye on your local festivals.

Miscellaneous, Reviews Tagged with: Four Reels

Mission: Impossible III (2006)

Oct 042006

Super agent and all around swell guy Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) has given up field work with the Impossible Mission Force in favor of instructing, and lying to his fiancée, Julia (Michelle Monaghan)—but she doesn’t have enough personality to talk about, so lets forget about her. When cute-as-a-bug agent Lindsey Farris (Keri Russell) is captured by evil weapons dealer Owen Davian (Philip Seymour Hoffman), Ethan overacts for a bit, then joins team members Luther (Ving Rhames), Declan (Jonathan Rhys Meyers), and Zhen (Maggie Q) in a ridiculous planned rescue operation that, thankfully, even his boss (Laurence Fishburne) thinks is stupid. More overacting helps Ethan decide to save the day by going on an unauthorized mission to get the arms dealer. Ah, but might his attempt be thwarted by a traitor in the ranks? If you don’t know the answer to that, you haven’t seen the previous films.

Tom Cruise rapes the television series Mission Impossible for the third time, but for this session he has director J.J. Abrams (TV shows: Felicity, Alias, Lost) to help hold it down. The two manage to craft a silly, slow, and pompous action thriller, that is seldom exciting and never emotionally compelling. There’s plenty of bullets, helicopter gun battles, and falls from high places, and not for a minute is it satisfying on any level. Seldom has a popcorn movie been so drab.

Cruise returns as overly emotional IMF agent, Ethan Hunt, displaying all the acting ability he’s become known for. Have you seen Eye’s Wide Shut? Yeah, that’s what you’ll have to suffer through. With a clever script that plays to a star’s strengths, an action film can get away with poor acting (think of almost anything with Arnold Schwarzenegger). Let the star show a bit of charm, keep things fast and light, add in a few wow!-inducing set pieces, and you have at least middling entertainment. But MI3 takes itself very seriously. You can almost hear Abrams shouting, “This is Theater! Act, damn you. Act!” Apparently he thought he was making Romeo and Juliet, (Ethan’s main squeeze in named Jules and he drinks “poison” in order to see her) which leaves Cruise in the position of having to show actual human feelings. It’s not a pretty sight. In between explosions, Ethan dwells on his love for Jules, his fear that she could be hurt, and other sentiments that fall far outside Cruise’s limited abilities. The boy looks good and can do a stunt or two. Shakespeare is not his bag.

But it isn’t just Cruise’s inability to play melodrama that sinks the picture. Abrams, using the shaking camera and greenish pallet so prevalent among directors who can’t figure how to make a scene legitimately exciting, submerges the whole film in an atmosphere of cruelty and unpleasantness. He doesn’t understand the difference between a fun spy movie and Reservoir Dogs. If he was looking for deep and meaningful human drama, than he needed to dump the over-the-top action, and get a different star. For pure matinee fun, he needed to have added in some…well…fun. What he gives us is some overused stunts and an overly precious wedding. Is that ever a good idea in an espionage flick?

Hoffman is a believable, barbaric villain in a movie that didn’t need a believable, barbaric villain. A clever and twisted bad guy would have worked much better. His scenes with Cruise only serve to point out the lead’s inadequacies. The rest of the cast falls somewhere between adequate and barely noticeable. Ving Rhames doesn’t embarrass himself, which makes him the most successful person on screen. Poor Michelle Monaghan is given the role of the lackluster girl friend who may not have a single character trait. You’re unlikely to remember her when she’s not in the frame.

I like my spy pics to have a few clever moments. Hey, they’re spies. But over the three films, the IM Force has gotten dimmer and dimmer, so that now they rely on rushing in with guns blazing and hope that luck gets them out. Time after time, our hero survives by random chance. Suspension of disbelief? No way.

Every once in a while, an action movie will come along with real wit behind it (True Lies). Then there are the extremely rare instances when all the planets come into perfect alignment (Die Hard). For all the rest, it’s simple: the filmmakers need to study the James Bond movies. If the project is reminiscent of Goldfinger or GoldenEye, things are in good shape. If On Her Majesty’s Secret Service or License to Kill come to mind, things are grim. MI3 is constructed from those latter titles, without even living up to their minimal standards.

Action, Miscellaneous, Reviews Tagged with: One Reel

Children of Men (2006)

Oct 042006

It’s 2027, and the last baby was born over eighteen years ago. The infertility of the human race has caused most societies to crumble, with violent anarchy the rule. Britain survives under a fascist government that cruelly carries out its no-immigration policy. Theo (Clive Owen), an apathetic, alcoholic, office worker, is brought into the fray by his ex-girlfriend/wife/lover, Julian (Julianne Moore), the leader of pro-immigrant terrorists. She’s found a girl (Claire-Hope Ashitey) who has become pregnant, and wants Theo’s help in getting her out of the country to the secretive Human Project.

Bleak, brutal, and compelling, Children of Men is a parable for the last six years, told with bullets, bombs, and a constant feeling of dread. Somehow, it manages to be fun to watch, but it is more impressive than enjoyable.

While Michael Caine, supplying the few light moments as a hippy living secretly in the woods, and Julianne Moore, as a cold, but perhaps too idealistic “freedom fighter,” have been getting a good deal of press, the film belongs to Clive Owen and Claire-Hope Ashitey, and mainly to Owen. It is a journey, physically and emotionally with one individual, and we’re along for the hellish ride. Owen is the man for the part. Be it depression, pain, shock, loss, or the discovery of hope, Owen captures every moment, making Theo one of the most compelling figures in recent cinema.

The plot is old hat in apocalyptic B-science fiction, coming uncomfortably close to that of the less-than-stellar American Cyborg: Steel Warrior. A man protects the world’s only fertile woman on a trek to reach a mysterious boat which will take her to safety. The ending is even the same. But it isn’t about the story, but the execution. Children of Men presents a believable near-future (believable under the circumstances), with thousands lamenting the death of the worlds youngest person (he was eighteen), black-clad military police on every corner, and immigrants kept in cages. Director Alfonso Cuarón (Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban) displays this dystopian world with gritty realism. The climactic urban warfare is the most stunning piece of filmmaking since Blackhawk Down. The audience around me jumped, winced, and sighed through the last fifteen minutes.

The themes are as powerful as the imagery. While the story is taking place twenty-one years in the future, the situations it is referring to are taking place now: The plight of immigrants and the simplistic way it is perceived, the loss of civil rights connected to the fear of terrorism, how people who just want to survive suffer for other people’s ideals. There’s a lot of Iraq in the film, as well as current U.S. and British political thought.

While I could get lost in the picture, I was pulled out repeatedly by the lack of information I was given. The sheer number of unanswered questions is distracting. Why was no one fertile for 18 years? Why have no artificial techniques been developed? Why do all the immigrants want to get into the U.K. when it is such a horrible, fascist state that is so cruel to immigrants? Why doesn’t Theo go to the press? Why does he need five thousand pounds? Does the Human Project exist, and if so, what will they do? Is Kee a fluke or will lots of women become pregnant? I welcome a film that, for a change, sticks with one character, letting us know only what he knows. But I’d have liked him to know a bit more.

But I have a bigger problem with Children of Men. It assumes it would be a good thing for the human race to survive. I suppose that’s a reasonable thing to expect an audience to accept, but I didn’t. In general, I like it when a film supports even its most popular positions, but lack of support isn’t the issue here. Rather Children of Men makes a forceful argument for the elimination of mankind. It paints a dismal picture of the species, and even when individuals aren’t sludge, it demonstrates over and over that people cannot interact with each other in larger numbers than two or three without dire consequences. If I’m supposed to care about the fight to save humanity, I need to be given some, small reason, to think its a good idea for us not to leave it all to the hamsters. I did care about Theo and Kee, but I didn’t want them to succeed, just escape. Children of Men will one day be an honored film, seen by all young hamsters so that they will feel no sorrow for those that have gone before them.

Dystopia, Reviews Tagged with: Three Reels

Return to Halloweentown (2006)

Oct 032006

Teen witch Marnie “Cromwell” Piper (Sara Paxton) heads off to college in Halloweentown, where evil forces plan to use her to enslave the friendly monsters. But first, Marnie must deal with bitchy college girls and other things that reach new heights of banality.

The fourth outing in the Halloweentown franchise (Halloweentown, Halloweentown II: Kalabar’s Revenge, Halloweentown High) raises the question: When, oh for God’s sake when, will it all end? I’m guessing not for a long time. These flicks have got to be cheap. They certainly look it. And if the producers are paying anything over minimum wage for the script, they’re being cheated. The movies last an hour and a half and couldn’t cost much more than three episodes of a Disney-channel, live action sitcom. Pumping out another lets the Mouse-House folks preempt some show they’ve already repeated five times and claim they’ve got a special event. Well, think short bus special.

Return to Halloweentown is no worse than its predecessors, which I suppose is some kind of accomplishment. But if your first film isn’t worth watching, making three more that also aren’t worth watching is a pretty minimal achievement. The first was insulting to the intelligence of children, and so is this one. Hey, more consistency! The only substantial changes are in the cast. Sara Paxton (Aquamarine) replaces Kimberly J. Brown as Marnie. Rumor has it that Brown had another job, but I can’t help but think Disney wanted to go younger—frightening since Brown was born in ’84. Paxton is pretty and heroin-chic thin. She shows no signs of being able to act, but it is unfair to judge her based on Return to Halloweentown since no one shows any signs of being able to act. Debbie Reynolds, the star draw in the earlier flicks, is technically in the film, popping up on witch-phone calls for close to a minute. She isn’t missed, though her absence spawns the ridiculous contrivance around which the plot spins. If she’d been in the film for two minutes, then Grandma Aggie could have explained what was going on and the movie could have ended right there. Damn. One minute more could have saved me an hour and a half.

While Marnie might be in the dark about the malevolent deeds taking place around her, the viewer isn’t. Everything is made clear within the first few minutes, so then it’s just a matter of waiting for Marnie to catch up. Wow, nothings more exciting than watching someone slowly figure out what you already know.

While the first film was intended for youngsters, it’s a bit unclear what the target audience is this time around. Since much of the time (far too much time) is spent on the difficulties a girl might have when leaving home for college, I’d normally guess such a movie was meant for sixteen to eighteen-year-old girls. But everything else is still geared toward the Barbie set. Perhaps the goal was to make a movie that would be entertaining to brilliant six-year-olds who finished high school at the same time as preschool. But anyone who can be described by the word “brilliant” isn’t going to be impressed.

The Disney label can mean good family fun, but don’t make the mistake of assuming that’s always the case. Sometimes, that label means you’ve found a disease that will rot your child’s mind.

Halloween, Reviews, Witches Tagged with: One Reel

Bah Humduck!: A Looney Tunes Christmas (2006)

Oct 032006

Rich, cruel, and greedy Daffy Duck misuses his employees and ignores the true meaning of Christmas. I think we all know what happens next: three spirits of Christmas show up to compel him to change his ways. 46 min.

A Christmas Carol? Again? I like the book. Really, I do. And several of the movies. But enough is enough. Children are now born with the tale coded into their DNA. Is there anyone in the Western Hemisphere who can’t recite it, and write their own version? Warner Brothers had already stuck the Looney Tunes into the story in 1979 with Bugs Bunny’s Christmas Carol. Is it so tricky to come up with a new plot? It would be nice to see a little imagination at work.

But lack of imagination runs through every facet of Bah Humduck!: A Looney Tunes Christmas. It isn’t bad. It just isn’t interesting, funny, or innovative in any way. I’d never know from watching this that fifty years ago, Bugs Bunny and company set the standard for witty animated shorts. Oh well, this is no What’s Opera Doc.

I suppose I’m being harder on this insignificant cartoon than it deserves, but it is pertinent that it’s all been done before. Perhaps because of that, the visits of the three spirits is given short shrift, leaving more time for slapstick. I’m happy to see anything added that puts a different spin on the material, but the myriad moments of irrelevant violence don’t alter the basic story. They are minorly amusing, which is about as good as it gets.

In place of clever writing, most of the old Looney Tunes characters are marched out in hopes that fans require nothing more than seeing them to be happy. Daffy, Porky, Sylvester, Granny & Tweety, Yosemite Sam, and The Tasmanian Devil at least have roles in the story. Also on hand are Bugs Bunny, Elmer Fudd, Pepe Le Pew, Marvin the Martian, The Road Runner, Willy E. Coyote, Speedy Gonzales, Foghorn Leghorn, Miss Prissy, The Bears, Claude the Cat, the mice Hubie and Bertie, Pete Puma, Ralph the Dog, the sad Penguin, and others I’d need a picture-list of Looney Tunes characters to name. Some have lines, while others stand around in the background to be counted by observant viewers.

Are these characters too well known, too untouchable, to ever be funny again? That could be the problem. A bit of the old Looney Tunes zing was visible in Tiny Toon Adventures and Pinky and the Brain, but is sorely lacking here. The timing is off, as if the new animators aren’t sure what made the old cartoons funny. Young kids won’t mind spending an hour with this reminder of better days, but it’s a bore to anyone older.

Other short takes on Dickens’s story reviewed on Foster on Film: Mickey’s Christmas Carol, Beavis and Butt-Head: Huh-Huh-Humbug!, Bugs Bunny’s Christmas Carol, and Mister Magoo’s Christmas Carol.

Christmas Shorts, Christmas Shorts, Reviews Tagged with: Two Reels

School for Scoundrels (2006)

Oct 022006

Annoying waste-of-flesh Roger (Jon Heder) is abused by his betters (who really are better) till he breaks down weeping. A friend gives him information about a secret class taught by the mysterious Dr. P (Billy Bob Thornton) that should make him less of a loser. Once there, he is abused by Dr. P and his assistant, Lesher (Michael Clarke Duncan) until he wins a paintball game. This causes Dr. P to become “competitive” and steal Amanda, Roger’s girl (Jacinda Barrett). Can Roget defeat Dr. P? Will failed student and recluse Lonnie (Ben Stiller) get to anally rape Lesher? Will Sarah Silverman fire her agent for getting her a tiny part in a movie she’s far too good for? Will you wake up when the credits roll wondering where you are?

Obviously, this isn’t a Post-War British Comedy (unless the war is Vietnam—or maybe the Gulf War?—and Britain is a town just north of L.A.), but the original School for Scoundrels was. I like to take a look at remakes of the movement’s films and see if they provide a clever updating of the concepts, or are an abomination before man, God, and movie critic. So far, things haven’t looked too good. Oh who am I kidding? They’re all abominations. 2004’s The Lady Killers was to comedy what salt and a cheese grater are to first degree burns. This unholy remake in not so painful, mainly because it isn’t competent enough. It’s just flacid.

I doubt director and co-writer Todd Phillips ever saw the 1959 version. Perhaps, during a drunken evening, he heard a few garbled sentences about a weak willed guy and a school to make him win and a tennis game. Those are about the only similar elements. He certainly missed the comic basis of the movie: it was a school for scoundrels, where the students learned how to appear to be gentlemanly while making others feel weak and foolish. Phillips gives us a school for assholes. Dr. P yells until everyone learns to be aggressive and unpleasant. Since nothing makes them tough, being aggressive would just get them beaten up, which is touched on, and then ignored.

OK, so he missed the scoundrels aspect. Fine. He could still make a moderately funny movie from a different concept. But he doesn’t. No one connected to the film seems to know what they are making. Jacinda Barrett is in a romantic, date-friendly comedy with heart. Too bad her love interest, Jon Heder, isn’t in that film. (Wait a minute. Jon Heder, i.e. Napoleon Dynamite, is the love interest? Were they high when casting this flick?) Heder is in a sophomoric Revenge of the Nerds rip-off. He hyperventilates and falls down a lot. Billy Bob Thornton is in a dark, edgy, shock comedy. Well, call it a PG-13, emasculated, dingy, rounded-edged, mildly uncertain comedy. It looks like once he got on set and found the film had no teeth that he just took a nap. Thornton’s more bored performing than I was watching, and I only stayed awake speculating on what bland bit of comedy they’d fail to execute next.

I suppose I’m being unfair. There’s somewhere between 1 and 3 funny gags in the movie, depending on your taste. Though if you’ve seen the trailer, you’ve got most the laughs your going to get. Yes, Heder hitting Thornton with a tennis ball my get a chuckle out of you. Him doing it twice is even better. Three times is pretty good. But you know, four isn’t an improvement. And starting an actual fight kills the comedy dead. Corpse-like. Which is what most of the film reminds me of. A drab, slightly rotting corpse. It doesn’t stink enough to offend, but it’s not something you want to spend time with.

The romance and Roger’s transformation are presented as if we’re supposed to be taking it seriously. Since there’s nothing on screen to make anyone think Amanda would even slow down if she found Roger under the tires of her car, and Roger’s only a new man because the script says so (can Heder do anything besides his Napoleon Dynamite shtick?), you’re not going to be glued to your seat for the drama. It all ends in a bizarrely unfunny, unromantic, and unrealistic segment that proves Todd Phillips hasn’t been near an airport in the last five years.

The film can be summed up by the recurring anal rape bit. Repeatedly, it’s implied that Lesher and/or Dr. P rape…somebody. And that’s it. Apparently, Phillips and company thought the mere mention of rape was a knee slapper. Hey, I’m not saying a joke about rape isn’t possible, just that no one connected to this picture is clever enough to pull it off. Or knows someone who is. Or has seen someone is passing who might be. “Clever” isn’t a word that’s used often when discussing this picture. OK, back to rape (because it’s so funny, right?). There’s two ways to go with a comedy when considering a rape joke. Either forget it (the best move 90% of the time), or go for it, gung ho with a dagger in your teeth, and an insane glint in your eye. Go nuts. Be extreme. You’ll upset a lot of people, but you might hit on some outlandish gold (anyone remember a little film called Pulp Fiction?). But School for Scoundrels doesn’t take the balls-to-the-wall route. It becomes hesitant, delicately sliding mumbled comments about sodomy in and hoping no one notices. If you plan it right, you can manage not to notice the movie at all.

Post-War British Comedy, Reviews Tagged with: Toxic

Pan’s Labyrinth (2006)

Oct 012006

Young Ofelia (Ivana Baquero) travels with her fragile and pregnant mother (Ariadna Gil) to the outpost of her new stepfather (Sergi López), a fascist captain entrusted with exterminating the remaining “rebels” hiding in the hills in the aftermath of the Spanish Civil War. Confronted by the cruelty of the world, Ofelia finds temporary refuge in an ancient labyrinth, where a faun (Doug Jones) informs her she is the long lost princess of the Underworld, and if she will complete three tasks, she can return to that land. While she faces magical threats, Mercedes (Maribel Verdú), the housekeeper, acts as an informant for the rebels.

A dark, harsh, bloody fantasy, Pan’s Labyrinth is a fable for a generation brought up on Saving Private Ryan and, perhaps, Hellraiser. It is the Brothers Grimm, cutting off the wicked stepsister’s toes and plucking out eyes, but with 5.1 surround sound. It is unrelenting and not for the squeamish, or anyone prone to nightmares.

It is also beautiful.

Guillermo del Toro is the most stylish director working, with only Tim Burton as close competition. He has an eye for what looks magical on film, and an affinity for monsters. Both are evident. Shot after shot (Ofelia in the labyrinth, Pan greeting her, the fairy-bug on the edge of the bed, the dying tree) could stand without the rest of the film, as artwork to be hung in museums. This is masterful stuff. His creations are marvels as well. Pan is impressive, and has been getting most of the press, but the Pale Man (also portrayed by mime-artist Doug Jones, best known as amphibian-psychic Abe Sapien in Hellboy) is the real accomplishment. A fiend with removable eyes that fit into his palms, if he can’t mentally stunt your prepubescent child, nothing can.

But it is the moments that are great accomplishments, not the whole, and a movie is more than the sum of its parts. The story is too simple. I should say “stories.” The fantasy segment is disconnected from the war plot, and while featured in all the advertising, gets short shrift onscreen. It is a very simple tale, with the predictability of a children’s book. The war story isn’t much more complex, and compared to almost any other war movie, little happens. The movie is two unremarkable stories, and that doesn’t add up to one interesting one.

It doesn’t help that we’re not given a consistent point of view. Why don’t we stay with Ofelia? It seems to be her story, yet she is abandoned for long periods as we follow Mercedes, the captain, and even the doctor for a time. This lessens the intimacy of the film, making us not confidants of a girl stuck in a tragic situation, but voyeurs to a long past struggle.

Pan’s Labyrinth owes much (too much) to del Toro’s previous examination of the Spanish Civil War, The Devil’s Backbone. It too had a child encountering dark magic while the “real” world produced greater horrors. It isn’t the first time that a director copied himself (Hitchcock made a career out of it), but I’d have preferred originality not only in the art direction. Like The Devil’s Backbone, people act in stupid ways just to move the plot. (If someone has the nerve and the reason to stab an enemy multiple times, including a particularly gruesome face slash, why not kill the person? The only reason here is that the enemy is needed in the next scene.) Also like Backbone it gets tiring waiting for things that are obviously going to happen. When Ofelia is given her pretty new dress, it is clear that she’s going to ruin it, so why is it presented with great drama and suspense? When she’s told not to eat anything in the fantasy land, everyone in the theater knows she will (although we know this only because it is a cliché; it is a ridiculous action, even for a child). When the sleeping drug is put, drop by drop into a glass, and the bottle is placed center stage, I sighed, knowing when and in what circumstances I’d see it used again.

Pan’s Labyrinth is filled with perfectly fashioned moments, and those are enough for me to recommend it, for one viewing anyway. But put together, they don’t amount to enough.

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Fantasy, Foreign Language, Reviews Tagged with: Three Reels

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